This is the online version of our daily newsletter, The Morning Win. Subscribe to get irreverent and incisive sports stories, delivered to your mailbox every morning. Here’s Mike Sykes
If you couldn’t already tell, I’m not the biggest fan of the NBA play-in tournament.
The way I see it is it’s just an excuse for bad teams to actually stay bad. It’s a saving grace for mediocrity. Your favorite team couldn’t play above .500 basketball? Don’t worry! As long as it’s the 10-seed it’ll have a shot at making the playoffs.
Let’s paint a picture. You’re a student who hasn’t studied for final exams. Your professor says it’s cool, though. They let you study for 30 minutes before the test. One of two things will happen — you pass and take the next course or you flunk and try again next semester. By the way, the next course is Calculus and you’re definitely not ready for that.
That’s all that’s happening here. It’s just a bunch of terrible teams who achieved the bare minimum for a possibility of a playoff spot. I just don’t feel like that’s something that should be rewarded.
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But the play-in is here to stay. Even I – a certified play-in hater — have to accept that, yes, this is awful, but it’s also incredible theater.
Watching the Timberwolves and Lakers trade gaffe after gaffe until the game was over was comically bad, but fun. And Diar DeRozan screeching as if she were in a horror movie every time the Raptors went to the free throw line was gold. These are the moments that make the play-in fun — even if it is objectively bad.
On top of that, it gives the NBA that March Madness element it’s been searching for. Remember when Patrick Beverley and the Timberwolves had their one shining moment last play-in? That’s the stuff that fans love. It puts butts in seats.
So I’m done advocating for the play-in to go away. That’s not happening. But what I will continue to ask for are improvements.
There’s got to be a way to give the upper seeds an earned competitive advantage here. These plucky underdogs get the advantage of mystery — the top teams in the conference have no idea who they’re playing for a whole week. They’re good enough for it not to matter as much, but still, it’s the principle that matters here.
Maybe allow the best team in the conference to pick their opponents, as my friend Tom Ziller writes in his brilliant basketball newsletter. That would be amazing theater, too. Of course, Dillon Brooks already called out LeBron James personally so he called the Grizzlies’ shot. But could you imagine the Nuggets saying, “Yo. We want LeBron and the Lakers” to start? That’d be epic. Get that on TV as soon as possible, NBA.
Maybe throw them an extra home game in the series early — a 3-3-1 series format with the first 3 games at the top seed’s home court. That way the lower seed still has a shot if it can steal one game early and make it home, but the top seed has a great chance of getting off to a 3-0 start.
I’m not sure what the exact solution here is, but winning deserves to be rewarded — especially if we’re going to give mediocrity a shot in the end, anyway.
That’s just food for thought. Give me a call, NBA. Let’s brainstorm.
Quick Hits: The worst first-round pick for every NFL team…The WNBA MVP odds are in…MLB expansion and more
— Our Christian D’Andrea is deep in his draft bag with this one. Here’s the worst first round pick in every NFL team’s history so far.
— Breanna Stewart and A’ja Wilson are neck-and-neck when it comes to the WNBA MVP odds, from Mitchell Northam. This season is going to be fun.
— MLB is considering expansion and it has fans debating about which city should get a team. Rob Zeglinski makes the case for New Orleans.
— This Spencer Dinwiddie and Kyle Kuzma beef is so dumb. It’s great.
Enjoy your day, folks!