I LIKE the NBA's play-in playoffs; shut up, Luka and LeBron

And I hope that Adam Silver, who is NOT "the fool" or whatever it was LeBron James said about who devised this system, keeps the play-in for Nos. 7-10 around another year.

First, per ESPN's Jay Williams (with whom I agree, as I blogged here) that King James is the greatest ever, ahead of Michael Jordan, is behind Jordan in one aspect that Williams noted — and that's being vocal about his health issues. It's been blogged about and laughed at on Twitter ever since his Heat days. But, his recent comments about not being sure he'd ever be 100 percent again? Williams is right. That's an open door to opponents.

What LeBron needed to do is shut up, hope that Anthony Davis' back is unlocked and that Dennis Schröder gets a better COVID brain and they dodge Damian Lillard, Carmelo Anthony, Enes Kanter and the rest of the Portland Trail Blazers.

Likewise, Luka Doncic should also shut up about the play-in, and hope that they stay ahead of the Blazers and possibly the LakeShow as well, and also avoid it. (And that he avoids being T-ed up one more time, which he admits.) 

 

(Update, July 11, 2022: They can shut up permanently now, cuz the league is making the play-in permanent.)

Luka should also hope that the Unicorn, Kristaps Porzingis, gets himself healthy for playoff time.

That said, I would tweak one other thing. Even though the lottery odds have been flattened, there's still a lottery. Exclude the two teams from each conference that finish 7-10 but don't make the playoffs from making the lottery. In other words, ONLY the 11-15 teams in each conference get lottery bingo balls. These other four teams will draft 11-14, period.

Oh, shut up Mark Cuban too.

 

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Red Satan had a piece on suggested tweaks, from a roundtable of part of their hoops staff. Two main suggestions, among the several, stood out. One was to cut it to just 8 vs 9 for the last spot. The other was, whether it was cut or not, to make it 2-of-3 instead of single game.

 

Not totally opposed to either, but not bigly favorable.

 

On the former? I don't think it devalues playoffs that much. (As if NBA and NHL playoffs aren't already devalued anyway.) On the second? Being more of a crapshoot is the whole point; look at MLB's wild card play-in game. Rather, let's make the first round of full playoffs go back to 3-of-5. That would reverse some already existing devaluation.