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.

  • mapleaddicts@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    11 months ago

    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.

    • Narrow-Talk-5017@alien.topBEnglish
      1·
      11 months ago

      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.

      • mapleaddicts@alien.topBEnglish
        1·
        11 months ago

        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