Henry Roldán
The chips seem to be more than stacked for the Play-In Tournament to remain in the NBA for an extended period of time.
According to ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski, the circuit’s board of governors, led by the team owners, would be willing to vote in favor of the Play-In Tournament becoming part of the fixture within the league.
It is worth remembering that, since the tournament was implemented in the 2021 season, its use has been voted on every year as a method of qualifying for the playoffs. However, because of its media success, everything leads to the owners confirming it as part of the fixture.
What is the NBA Play-In Tournament?
The current Play-in Tournament is a modification of the original created in the 2020 season during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Originally, if the eighth and ninth place teams were within four games of each other, they faced off for the last playoff berth. Following that trial season, four more teams were included in the Play-in Tournament, which began in 2021 and took the seventh through tenth place in each conference.
Because it is now a four-team mini-championship, the 7th place team faces the 8th place team in a direct match, and the winner qualifies as the 7th seed. The loser of that game will face the winner of the game between ninth and tenth place to determine who will finish eighth and qualify for the tournament.
There was great discussion at the time about the injustice that this system could bring, since a team in seventh place, who outplayed a team in tenth place by a significant number of games, could be eliminated in only two games.
However, in the tournament’s first two seasons, the teams seeded in the seventh position are undefeated with a 4-0 record, while those in the eighth position are the least fortunate to qualify by doing so only once.
The ninth-placed teams have advanced to the next round on three occasions, while the tenth-placed teams have a 0-4 record in qualifying.
