Was Spencer Dinwiddie the catalyst for NBA’s new postseason play-in proposal?

Back in March, Spencer Dinwiddie had an idea for the NBA to help the league recover some of its losses from the hiatus.

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In the earlier stages of the NBA’s hiatus, Spencer Dinwiddie came up with a modification for the 2020 playoffs.

Dinwiddie even heard from NBPA executive director Michelle Roberts after he shared his idea for a play-in round.

“So, basically, it was kind of like looking at March Madness, right? And the buy-in and then also our loss of revenue, right, during this time period (from) not playing roughly 18 games per team,” Dinwiddie said back in March. “One of the ways March Madness does a really good job, they invite everybody to the football stadium. You get about 100,000 people in there, which is the equivalent of five games. Right?

“So, I was thinking, how can we make that happen? Well, you can’t do that with the top seeds ’cause they earned the right to have home-court advantage. So what if you had this little play-in, tournament-style? Maybe best-of-three situation where, ya know, you get everybody in these football stadiums, you ramp up the revenue, you get everybody excited, and then when you get back to the regular playoffs, ya know, all the people that played into that round of 16, you kind of resume playoffs as usual.”

Well, as the NBA tries to get a plan together for the 2020 NBA season, the league is now working on a new playoff format, according to ESPN‘s Adrian Wojnarowski. The new idea: a four-team play-in tournament between the “Nos. 7, 8, 9 and 10 seeds for the final two playoff spots in each conference.”

The NBA also had a play-in round in the Disney bubble. The Washington Wizards had the chance to force one, but could not. The Western Conference, however, did host a play-in matchup between the Memphis Grizzlies and Portland Trail Blazers.

While there have been discussions of a play-in tournament in the past, per Woj, nothing happened until Dinwiddie shared his idea — of course, in the middle of a strange year that’s lent itself to unconventional ideas.

With the league entertaining the idea of multiple play-in teams, Dinwiddie wants to know when he’s going to get some credit, tweeting:

I SWEAR I SHOULD GET PAID FOR THIS