The NBA Doesn’t Need A Mid-Season Tournament

With the NBA Off-Season in full effect, NBA fans find themselves on the edge of their seat waiting to see what the future of the league looks like. Amongst those deciding events are free agency, the NBA Draft, and the meetings amongst team governors where they discuss new rules or formats for the future of the game. The three main topics of discussion are the sleep-inducing “take foul” where players foul opposing teams in fast break situations to prevent easy points, the Play-In tournament, and a new mid-season tournament.

The “take foul” is one of the most horrible trends to happen to the game in recent memory. The NBA thrives on moments where players are allowed to show their athletic superiority by either dunking over an opponent or crossing their defender out of their shoes. With the take foul, NBA fans have been robbed of the potential viral moments that are typically produced in these fast-break situations. The good news is the take foul is on the way out with fouled teams being awarded one free throw shot by anybody on the court at the time of the foul and possession of the ball, like a flagrant foul penalty.  

The concept for the play-in tournament was introduced in 2020 as a result of the NBA trying to balance the scales as they attempted to finish the season during the first wave of the Covid-19 pandemic. The following season, the play-in tournament became an official addition to the NBA schedule, guaranteeing teams who placed ninth or tenth at the end of the season another opportunity to secure a playoff spot. While the format of this play-in tournament is a bit confusing, fans seem to be warming up to the idea of it. Giving teams that would automatically be eliminated from postseason contention based on seeding is a great idea in a situation like 2020 where the number of games played by each team was inconsistent. However, in a sport like basketball where the best team typically wins, the play-in tournament has ultimately proved to be an exercise that confirms the accuracy of the end-of-season standings. So far in the two years of the play-in tournament, only two lower-seeded teams have won play-in games. However, in both instances, the losers had major injury issues with Paul George of the Los Angeles Clippers being sidelined by Covid-19 and Cleveland Cavaliers’ Center Jarrett Allen not being at full strength due to a fractured finger.

Finally, we have the mid-season tournament, a concept that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been floating for years in hopes of restoring interest in the NBA regular season. It’s no secret that the NBA season has been devalued in recent years with teams allowing (sometimes demanding) players to sit out games in hopes of avoiding injury so they can perform when the NBA Playoffs start every April.

While this is a massive problem, a mid-season tournament seems to be a disaster in the making. The first reason is one could argue that the play-in tournament works to devalue the regular season further. How valuable is the regular season for a team qualifying for one of the sixteen available postseason slots when you allow four more teams to get an extra shot at making the playoffs during the play-in tournament? Essentially two-thirds of the league has a shot of making the playoffs at the end of the year. Perhaps it gives teams who would normally be out of the picture by March hope that they will be playing basketball in May causing them to continue to compete. On the flip side, the Play-In tournament strips the sense of urgency that teams come into the first half of the season with because the threat of your last twenty games becoming meaningless becomes minimized.

The second reason why a mid-season tournament could be a disaster in the making is the NBA already has a tournament that decides the best team in the league, the NBA Playoffs. Every season, like a good story, should have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Throwing a mid-season tournament into that mix will confuse fans in a multitude of ways. The WNBA currently has the Commissioner’s Cup, a mid-season tournament that takes place after the All-Star game. In my experience following the WNBA, the Commissioner’s Cup tournament isn’t something that I look forward to each year. If I’m being honest, the mid-season tournament causes a dip in my WNBA interest until the playoffs start. Additionally, how will we weigh an NBA Championship versus a mid-season championship? What are the optics of missing one tournament and making the other? Will debates around the Greatest of All Time come down to who has the most mid-season tournament championships? At the very least questions like these only add grease to the flames of an already toxic NBA Twitter atmosphere and ultimately an NBA media that can’t tell the difference between real and fake quotes.

The final reason why a mid-season tournament wouldn’t be a good idea is the potential negative impact it could have on the health of players. The short turnaround between the conclusion of the 2019-20 season and the start of the 2020-2021 season led to a situation where nearly every playoff series had a significant injury that swayed the momentum. Fans want to see their favorite players playing at the highest level possible. However, the seasons of many teams ended with a simple question: what if our superstar didn’t get hurt? Lebron James, Anthony Davis, Kyrie Irving, James Harden, Kawhi Leonard, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Trae Young, and more had to deal with injuries that ultimately sidelined them or compromised their abilities during the playoffs. The NBA is the most star-driven league in the country, without the superstars, interest goes down, hence the reason why Adam Silver is trying to incentivize a mid-season tournament. However, it would be a tragedy if players missed out on a chance for an NBA Championship because they’ve suffered a season-ending injury during the mid-season tournament.

It remains to be seen what the NBA Board of Governors decides to do. While I, like many NBA fans applaud Adam Silver’s creativity in addressing an issue basketball fans have had for half a decade, a mid-season tournament isn’t what the sport needs right now. The NBA’s focus should be on increasing understanding of the sport and improving the quality of broadcasts for max enjoyment. As it stands right now, it appears the earliest NBA fans could expect a mid-season tournament on the schedule is 2023-24, however, the idea isn’t fully guaranteed to become a reality, yet.