The tournament has done a pretty good job of making the NBA more like a European Soccer league season with random overlapping tournaments that make things confusing but fun, but they can go farther with it with these additions:

Include random non NBA teams like Duke, the best G League team, or Barcelona’s basketball team.

Groupings determined by a celebrity fishing out ping pong balls from a bowl on TV.

Declare one game a year the “Community Shield”. I’ve never learned what the Community Shield game is about, and I don’t care to, but I know it’s a thing they kind of care about but not that much.

Create a second in season tournament but only invite the good teams. Create a third in season tournament and invite the next best teams. The teams not good enough for either get to chill.

Start calling it a “treble” if you win three tournaments in the same year.

Tie games in the knockout rounds determined by five players per team shooting one free throw each.

When we get to the point when a team realizes that it’d be better to lose a certain game than try to win, we know we’ll have succeeded.