NBA Playoff Preview: The Play-in Tournament

This is a great idea by the NBA for the fans. Like I mentioned earlier, nobody really cares about who ends up with the seventh or eighth seeds in each conference. They usually end up getting swept in the first round. Sometimes, they’ll win a couple of games and make the series interesting, but nobody ever thinks these teams have a shot at actually winning a series.

That part hasn’t changed. The seven and eight seeds don’t have much of a shot, if any, against the top seeds. However, the play-in tourney does add greater interest to who ends up with those seeds.

The play-in tourney gives more meaning to the end of the regular season. It gives teams more of an incentive to compete on a nightly basis. For example, as of writing this the Washington Wizards are currently the eleventh seed in the East. In any other season, they would have already begun to tank, and rest their star players. But because of the play-in tourney, the Wizards actually have something worth playing for. They are only on game back of the tenth seeded Chicago Bulls who have just lost Zach Lavine to injury according to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.