I recently saw that Tyrese Halliburton believed the in-season tournament should guarantee the tournament winners a playoff-spot. While I do agree that the tournament could give better incentives to players to ensure a certain level of competitiveness, I disagree because the tournament winners could then ignore the rest of the season in preparation for the post-season (benching key players, etc.)
However, what if the tournament winners received better seeding? My idea is that the tournament winner receives 10/15 extra wins at the end of the season.
Last season, in the west, the Mavericks were the 11th seed, with a record of 38-44 with a win percentage of .463. Under my proposed system, assuming the Mavericks were the tournament winners (they were a top 6 seed before the Kyrie trade which would happen after the tournament time frame, and anything could happen during single-elimination, although I guess this detail doesn’t really matter, because this is a hypothetical), their new record would be 53-44, assuming we use 15 wins. Their new win percentage would be 53/97 = .546, guaranteeing them the 5th seed over the Clippers. I chose the Mavericks because they were the lowest seed in the West that would be guaranteed a playoff spot by the end of the season. Essentially, you add 15 games to the tourney champ’s record and calculate a new win percentage. You would still be able to fight for better or worse seeding, which would still encourage regular season competition after the tournament.
There are other hypotheticals as well. What would have happened if the Sixers won? They would have had to face the Heat in the first round, once given the first seed? Last season was unique (dominant Heat), but this is still a huge what-if when we consider how the Bucks or Celtics also would have been affected as a result. The West is always a dogfight, and I think that last year so many teams could’ve won and changed the playoff landscape completely. Some of the playoff lock-in caliber teams could have an easier time once they guaranteed the first or second seed, and have more time to rest players if they sweep or gentleman-sweep their opponents.
I would still want to preserve the actual win-loss record that each team received, because that would indicate how good teams were in the regular season, and the seeding tables would definitely need an extra asterisk to indicate so, for record keeping. 15 games might be a too much, so I believe that this number could easily be altered, so long as it still makes some sort of impact. I just feel like this is something that addresses this. How do you feel?
This was my first post on Reddit. I’ve been on here for a couple of months, but don’t actively post or comment. Sorry if this was long or structured weirdly, and maybe some things could’ve been explained better. Thanks for reading though.
It depends on what the ultimate goal is for the tournament. If they want it to eventually have meaning/stand alone than having it’s prize be for something else doesn’t really help them there. Plus with how volatile the league is the team that wins it might look completely different come playoffs. Imagine if the Nets won it when they still had Harden/KD/Kyrie or in Haliburton’s case if the Kings had won it before he was traded. I get these aren’t the most common situations, but in your proposal that Nets team would’ve been the #1 seed.
I don’t think this tournament prize should have any impact on the playoffs, since every game but the final one are just regular season games anyhow, but I do think there is room for improvement on player incentives. In addition to the cash prize you could add an automatic all-star spot for someone on the roster. They could expand the all-star roster by a spot and it could even add extra incentive to the return of East vs West since whatever team wins their conference would get an extra player. Now a trade like the Haliburton one still kinda breaks it because he’d be on the west in this scenario but a player of his tier is already gonna make the team so now someone else from the Kings would get a shot.
In relation to the examples you gave, some level of playoff reward would have been good for those teams. If the Kings are now making the playoffs then maybe they don’t do that trade and don’t sell off their star player.