As someone who has followed the NBA for 10-15 years (albeit somewhat casually), it never made sense to me why it was acceptable for teams to mentally check out once the game was deemed “over”. So much so that it is seen as disrespectful for the winning team to keep trying in “garbage time”. Coming from a soccer background, the culture is such that regardless of the score you always play your hardest till the last minute, and players are regularly chastised for “giving up”.
It only feels right to provide your paying audience with your maximum effort for the whole duration of the game. What more, it’s not even pure lip service, either! There have been countless last minute comebacks that seemed absolutely improbable because teams played till the last minute, even if they lacked belief themselves. It’s not even like it’s impossible in basketball for these sort of comebacks to occur (I’m thinking TMac scoring 13 points in 13 seconds in 2004). For those saying something like that happening is an edge case and near impossible, why does that give NBA athletes the license to not try when they’re still in the position to attempt to make a difference?
Right now, the controversy surrounding the In-Season Tournament’s tie breaker rules being based on point differential has led to so much controversy about it “taking away the integrity of the game” by numerous players, but to me, the fact that players treat the game is essentially over once they decide it’s too difficult to come back and expect their opponents to also effectively stop playing is what takes away the integrity of the game.
To a certain extent these are just the consequences of the American draft + franchise system. Losing teams don’t fear getting relegated and they might even get a great player out of it. Since losing isn’t as bad, there’s a certain level of heartlessness there.
Look at the Bulls and Lavine for example. If the guy was a European soccer player his career prospects would seriously tank, since players with loser mentality that don’t perform are seen as really bad. In the Nba he might get acquired by a serious contender that wants to win.
TLDR: The system doesn’t punish losing enough to make players and teams seriously compete all the time
big difference to soccer is the amount of games played. blowing a lead in 38 match league is one thing. blowing one in a 82 will probably not matter. also theres no such thing as a 40 point lead in soccer, so you often must play hard to the end and are expected to do so, even if in one or two rare occasions youre already up 4-0 and know it wont matter.
I think to an extent it is disrespectful to run up the score, let’s say when you’re up 20 or more with like less than 4 minutes left, or to showboat in garbage time. However in the long term these things help to ignite rivalries and manufacture narratives and drama for the fans to enjoy so I think it’s good when it happens every now and again.
Oh please. Same format as soccer… everyone needs to quit whining like little ninnies and get used to it. It’s not the NCAA tourney… it’s a baby early-season tourney. Supposed to be simple and basic.
Playing for points on sports betting would be taking away the integrity of the game. Don’t see how anyone could claim the tournament is. Points just matter as well now so teams have to adjust for that, which is new to people, but no legitimate claim can be made that it’s ruining the game.
I think they should just add a few extra games and make it that the 2 top teams make it in automatically. So point differential only matters within the group