Did the NBA make a mistake?

I could not help myself from making this article. Now that the 2020-2021 season has come to a close, and the reality of the new play-in tournament is here. Many different NBA players, fans, and even owners have gone back on their word with the new playoff play-in format. So I had to write an article.

The two worst offenders of going back on their word being Mark Cuban and Lebron James, with Lebron going so far as to say that person who created this format "needs to be fired". Let's take a look at the original format, the new format, and why those comments are absolutely absurd.

Previous format

As we know the basketball playoff bracket was probably the most simple in all of professional sports. Teams that finished the regular season in seeds 1-8 in both conferences made the playoffs. Then both conferences would play 3 best of 7 rounds (1st, semi final, and conference final series) within their conference. Until one team from both the eastern and western conference plays one last best of 7 series for the NBA finals championship.

As for the other 14 teams in the league, they do not make the playoffs. Better luck next time. Pretty cut and dry, right?

New format

This year only teams seeded from 1-6 will be guaranteed their spot in the playoffs. As for seeds 7-10, they will play an extra game (or two) to earn their spot in the playoffs. Teams with the 7th and 8th seed, will play against each other to officially earn the 7th seed. As for the loser of that round, they still have one more game to play against the winner between seeds 9/10. Then whom ever wins that round, becomes our 8th seed. As for the two losers, they're simply eliminated from the playoffs to be re-seeded accordingly. Finally after all of that. The playoffs will proceed as normal. Honestly that was really hard to say, just refer again to the picture above if you had trouble following.

Overall impressions

Personally I think it's a great idea, it's only one maybe two more game(s). Everybody makes more money because of these extra games. Fans love it because we lost so much basketball over these last two seasons thanks to Covid. And if this new format is here to stay, I think it would be a great deterrent to tanking especially for those mid level teams after the NBA trade deadline. Lastly this will add some much needed drama back into the league in regards to potentially seeing some very crazy upsets.

Sure we need to take health into consideration but it's not a full 7 game series. If it was, then of course I'd highly disagree with this new format. Even if it was a best of 5 series that would be extremely unfair. But one/two more game(s) is not going to drastically harm anyone. Players are already used to an 82 game regular season so what's 1/2 games in a shortened 72 game season going to really mean fatigue wise? Plus players very rarely even play the full 82 games nowadays. It just doesn't really happen all that much anymore. If anything they'll just be "breaking even".

Then if all else fails the league has made it very clear this is a 1 year experiment, if we fans respond negatively oh well. But if this experiment goes well this may be the breath of fresh air the NBA post season has been needing in a long time.

So no this was not a bad idea. No one deserves to get fired, Lebron. Cuban, you can't change your mind on the play-in format just because there WAS a very real chance the Dallas Mavericks would have to play in. Spoiler alert, they did just well enough to avoid the play-in tournament. The pros of this new format way outweigh all the cons, especially the imaginary concern for player health. And overall for the first time in a while it really felt like every game after the trade deadline really mattered. Instead of just going through the motions until the playoffs started. Every day it felt like we were hearing about potential matchups; so much good drama up until pretty much the last game for multiple teams especially in the highly competitive Western Conference.

TL:DR:

No it was not a mistake. Stop being bitter there's a chance you may be bounced out of the playoffs before they even truly start.

Thank you for your time, I hope you enjoyed what you have read today. I have plenty of different articles on many different topics. Feel free to give those other articles a read or two. Also if you'd be so kind, I'd greatly appreciate a heart and if you really feel so inclined tips are always appreciated but by no means required.