The Inside The NBA folks seem to have no idea how a tournament works and it’s difficult to listen to them talk about this tournament.
Why is point differential such a difficult concept for them to understand?
Candace Parker’s idea is to ignore the group and just advance the top teams with the best records, out of all the groups. Then what’s the point of the groups? It’s a tournament. I don’t think she realizes that point differential would still come into play.
Chuck wants the 2 top teams in the West to advance because they have the best regular season records. Let’s ignore the fact that they couldn’t play well in the tournament.
This tournament has a lot of potential as we saw in that Kings/Warriors game. Most of those plays in the 4th quarter would’ve never occurred if this was just a regular season game.
I do believe that these games need to be independent of regular season games though.
If you’re still struggling to understand how tournaments with groups work, play some FIFA or watch any sport outside of America. It’s a really fun system.
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The biggest problem imo is the inconsistent scheduling. OKC literally went over a week of playing ball - twice against the Warriors who are in their group by the way and neither of those were tournament games.
I think if they just did games over x stretch of time, that would be way easier to follow vs playing for a week, maybe longer of regular games then having a tournament game randomly occur.
The point of the in season tournament is to keep interest high throughout the season. After the first few games of a new season where fans are returning after having months of no NBA basketball, interest starts to fade a bit. People get a more reasonable idea of what their team looks like & they know the standings aren’t going to look anything like they do by the end of the season.
In a typical season, interest is very high at the start, but then starts to fade off after the standings start to stabilize a bit more and 1 win/loss doesn’t mean jumping/falling 5 spots. Interest starts to pick back up around the trade deadline and all-star break. There is usually some drama for a bit after that about new players on new teams. Then, near the end of the season, when final positioning is being decided, interest is super high.
The biggest drop in interest and fan engagement is that stretch of the season after the novelty of a new year has worn off, but before hype about the trade deadline & all star break has started.
If they were to condense the tournament to a span of like 2 weeks instead of 2 months, it just wouldn’t be long enough to maintain interest levels during this timespan.
Yeah but you know what else kills interest? When you play people who are CLEARLY in your group multiple times and none of those count but then play a tournament game 2 weeks from the last and it doesn’t count for shit because you lost 2 games a month ago and are out either way now.
Either expand the number of teams so each group can play more teams or make it so EVERY Tues/Fri all 30 teams play (so 8 games) we’re not having a random ass 2 week lull after playing the initial 2 games - literally no excuse to play teams in your group and have them not count.
I also never said condensing it to 2 weeks. If they are adamant about making this a November thing, every game in the month should be tournament games with the next stages trickling and ending on the 2nd week of Dec so they can roll the momentum into Christmas
Candace Parker’s idea is to ignore the group and just advance the top teams with the best records, out of all the groups. Then what’s the point of the groups? It’s a tournament. I don’t think she realizes that point differential would still come into play.
Huh? When did she say that. I saw that she had the idea that wildcard tiebreakers should be based on records, not point differential, but that’s totally different from what you’re saying now, and I can see the sense in it.
Have the 18 coaches who didn’t win or take second in their group select the fourth team in each of their respective conferences.
Selection has to be one of the three runner ups per group. Coaches can’t vote for their own team, of course. Adds some discussion and drama to the wildcard. In the case of a three way tie, do tech differential.
If players don’t want point differential, the NBA won’t keep it, which sucks because I want teams to just absolutely run scores up in group play.
It’s going to take people a couple years to REALLY understand the points system. It will come along in time. Right now the games just need to be great, which they have been.
A 10 year old can understand the format. It’s really really not complicated.
It takes about two minutes to understand the system even if you’ve never seen anything like it before.
Probably, but a lot of people aren’t going to take the time to learn because they don’t really care. Right now it’s just about the games being good or not.
Cuz it’s new
As much as I love the crew it’s very obvious these guys do not put any effort into making sure they know what they’re talking about on set. Ernie is the only one you know actually sits down and takes notes on EVERYTHING. He is well prepared because he knows he has to be. The other guys can just wing it because it’s their personalities that sell. If none of them knew what was going on that would be bad though.
It’s really poorly put together. Having regular season games double as tournament games is just fucking dumb. Easy fix. Split the season into 2 40 game halves. Tournament will be all single elimination and seeding is based on your record after the 1st 40 games. In addition to prize money winner gets an extra few home games and teams knocked in round 1 lose a home game. The groups are just stupid since the league has 32 permanent teams imo. It works in soccer cause you really never know who you will play and you get cool once in a lifetime match ups
I like the idea of using last season’s record to qualify. This prevents teams from tanking, theoretically.
because it’s just a bullsh*t moneygrab
They probably think its dumb and dont care to learn.
They will just make it 16 teams tourney next year. If you can’t make it, no one will feel sorry for you.
Don’t expect good analysis from any of these halftime/post game shows. I hope people realize that even if the Inside guys are entertaining, they don’t care enough/prep enough to have a good understanding of the league.
The tournament games counting for the regular season is actually a really good idea. If they didn’t, you would have some teams resting all their players.
I don’t think it’s complicated at all, but the dual meaning of regular and in-season games was always going to confuse people that didn’t want to put the time in to understand how it works
I do believe that these games need to be independent of regular season games though.
I disagree with this. To begin, you’re either adding games to an NBA player’s season or to keep games the same, you’re shortening the NBA season.
The other thing is that what makes in-season tournaments in soccer fascinating is that teams sometimes have to make tough choices: play full out in a tournament game or save those tournament games (at risk of losing them) for the sake of being at 100% in regular season games. It seems to me that the Dubs absolutely played this game differently at the end than they would have if they weren’t worried about advancing in the tournament by winning by 12. But that’s a choice! They could have played for the win by running out the clock, but they wanted to preserve their tournament chances. Which is what makes it interesting.
Boomers don’t put in the effort to try to understand new things and hate change
This is the first I’ve heard of anyone listening to what “candice parker” has to say.
The quotes around her name is hilarious, are you suggesting that’s not her name?