The inaugural season of the NBA In-Season Tournament is "a hit" for fans while some call for changes next yearGetty Images
The NBA's inaugural In-Season Tournament has "been a hit" and fans have "seemingly brought in to an event that spices up the early part of a long season," according to Bennett Durando of the DENVER POST. This new NBA endeavor is "fun to play along with," but "only as long as it isn’t eclipsing a team’s primary goal, which is to win games regardless of whether the court is painted funny." Durando lists some of the changes that he thinks "can make the tournament even better." They include having "eight groups of four" and having every team in the group stage play its "group-mates twice, home and away." To prevent certain quarterfinal matchups from "growing stale," a knockout bracket of the eight groups should be "randomized before the start of each tournament, locking in which group winners will play each other in advance." As for the special courts, "just lower the color saturation a tiny bit during the design phase" (DENVER POST, 12/2).
IS THAT NECESSARY? The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Beaton & Robinson wrote that basketball fans have “become used to a few new things” in the first year of the NBA’s In-Season Tournament, including "purple courts, weird scheduling, the concept of a group stage." But they are "still wrapping their minds around how much they should really care about this whole competition.” It is a question whether winning the in-season tournament is "worth a parade." A spokesperson for Milwaukee Mayor Cavalier Johnson in an email wrote, “Of course, we don’t want to get to far ahead in planning -- that’s bad luck. If the team wants a parade, we’re happy to work with them on that kind of celebration” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 12/3).
