Reviewing the NBA play-in tournament

The NBA has implemented a version of a tournament to decide the last 2 playoff spots in each conference for the last 2 seasons. They also had a version in the 2020 season that was added on the fly to invite more teams onto the bubble.

I plan on looking back and evaluating this year's potential play-in tournament and how it has impacted the NBA in the last two seasons.

2022 Play-in and updates going forward.

The play-in tournament this year has been an exciting race and has pushed every team to try harder, to either stay out of out or to make it into it. There will be plenty of stars in the games like Karl Anthony-Towns, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, and potentially Lebron James. This comes after last year when Steph Curry and JA Morant, along with Lebron, played in do-or-die games that captured interest among sports fans everywhere. The idea has been amazing for fans and it makes the regular season more exciting.

However, that does not mean it can not be adjusted in the future. The main change I think should be made is having a “games back” requirement. For example, this year the Minnesota Timberwolves are 43-34 and the is a chance they could not be in the playoffs because of one bad night to a team like the Lakers that are 31-45. Having one game override an 11 game difference devalues the playoff pool and it is not a fair outcome. Also, it makes the top seeds behave differently since their opponent is completely up in the air until the day before the playoffs. That will continue to be an issue, but a change I would like is allowing the top seeds to choose their first-round opponent along with the other top 3 seeds to do it as well. It would have more strategy and more of a reward.