Lowe: Play-in tournament to decide seeds 7 and 8

[Machine]

So Zach Lowe has an article on a change the league is considering (or may not consider) for the future. Kind of a twist on an old Bill Simmon's suggestion.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...lay-tournament


Essentially the proposal would be that seeds 7-8-9-10 in each conference would play two mini tournaments. Seed 7 would face seed 8. The winner gets the 7th seed in the playoffs. Seeds 9 and 10 face each other.. and the winner gets to play the loser of the first game (between seeds 7/8) to get the 8th spot.

The goal would be to try and eliminate tanking and to create a buzz around teams that may or may not make the playoffs. I guess a little similar to the wild card game in baseball.

Could impact the Raps, if they go tanking in 2-3 years when all our stars contracts are off the books.

I like this idea as a means to eliminate tanking and think it would be good for the league and add excitement to bored fanbases at the end of the season. Im all for it.

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[planetmars]

As for the tournament idea.. I love it. NBA is boring in March/April, and that little tourney would jazz it up. I mean I could see the Raps being a borderline 7,8,9,10th place team when Lowry/Ibaka are gone and DD is the only vet around (or is gone too). Our bench is good but I don't see a real star there (OG is going to be a great role player, but he's not a guy who would throw down 25 ppg).

Would love the chance to squeeze into the 8th spot even if they are playing like a 10th place team.

I'm not sure if it will help kill tanking though. Teams in the 7-10 spot aren't the teams that are trying to lose.. they just suck at winning.

[KeonClark]

The GSW thing is a big time NBA fail. I think more so from the players association as they didn't want the smoothing.

But to avoid stars hooking up like the Heat... you need to raise max contracts or eliminate them. It'll squeeze the middle class but would create better parity.

The Heat didn't bother me. The Heat were beatable by the best teams in most eras

[planetmars]

The GSW thing is a big time NBA fail. I think more so from the players association as they didn't want the smoothing.

But to avoid stars hooking up like the Heat... you need to raise max contracts or eliminate them. It'll squeeze the middle class but would create better parity.

[golden]

LOL time for the NBA to raise the REAL issue and that is not the playoff seedings. I'm talking about SUPERTEAMS. Superteams are not good for the league.

The Warriors are going to win the championship this year. And they are going to continue to win as long as they have Curry, Durant, Klay and Green.

How bad is it? the ONLY teams that could challenge them in a 7 game series are the Rockets and the Cavs. When i say challenge, i mean beat them 1 or MAYBE 2 times in a 7 game series.

Warriors are kind of a fluke, though, in that Curry's ankle injury influenced him to sign an egregiously below market value contract that gave GS the salary cap flexibility to make all these moves, in coordination with a perfectly timed salary cap spike.

I don't know if another team could assemble 2 MVPs + 2 high-end all-stars on one team again. Warriors deserve 3 stars, because they drafted and developed them all far above their potential, but I'm not sure you'd be able to pay a 4th guy who is also a legit MVP and then fill out the rest of the roster.

[Other Scott]

LOL time for the NBA to raise the REAL issue and that is not the playoff seedings. I'm talking about SUPERTEAMS. Superteams are not good for the league.

The Warriors are going to win the championship this year. And they are going to continue to win as long as they have Curry, Durant, Klay and Green.

How bad is it? the ONLY teams that could challenge them in a 7 game series are the Rockets and the Cavs. When i say challenge, i mean beat them 1 or MAYBE 2 times in a 7 game series.

Okay the 70 game winning Golden State Warriors were purely good drafting - the big 3 players on that roster were drafted by Golden State, and the Iguodala trade back in 2013 they got him at fair value (they traded 2 first round picks and 2 second round picks just to clear the space). There's no changes that need to be made to prevent a team from doing their job and drafting spectacularly well.

The Durant signing was a one time thing that was a disastrous mistake by the league and the players association where they did not smooth out the cap spike from TV deals. And the Durant signing wasn't even the worst part of it. The fact that players who were free agents in 2016 are going to make 3 times the amount of money equivalent players who are free agents in 2018 are about to is completely ridiculous.

There's no changes that have to be made to the league's structure to prevent superteams. Just next time a cap spike comes, please smooth it.

[The Great One]

LOL time for the NBA to raise the REAL issue and that is not the playoff seedings. I'm talking about SUPERTEAMS. Superteams are not good for the league.

The Warriors are going to win the championship this year. And they are going to continue to win as long as they have Curry, Durant, Klay and Green.

How bad is it? the ONLY teams that could challenge them in a 7 game series are the Rockets and the Cavs. When i say challenge, i mean beat them 1 or MAYBE 2 times in a 7 game series.

[planetmars]

So Zach Lowe has an article on a change the league is considering (or may not consider) for the future. Kind of a twist on an old Bill Simmon's suggestion.

http://www.espn.com/nba/story/_/id/2...lay-tournament


Essentially the proposal would be that seeds 7-8-9-10 in each conference would play two mini tournaments. Seed 7 would face seed 8. The winner gets the 7th seed in the playoffs. Seeds 9 and 10 face each other.. and the winner gets to play the loser of the first game (between seeds 7/8) to get the 8th spot.

The goal would be to try and eliminate tanking and to create a buzz around teams that may or may not make the playoffs. I guess a little similar to the wild card game in baseball.

Could impact the Raps, if they go tanking in 2-3 years when all our stars contracts are off the books.