Head coach Ty Lue and the Los Angeles Clippers are currently preparing to take part in the NBA's inaugural in-season tournament. The Clippers will get their first taste of tournament action on Friday evening when they travel to face the Dallas Mavericks, and Lue for his part has plenty of motivation to try to help guide his team to a win.
Lue was recently asked what his driving motivation is for participation in the in-season tournament, and his answer was hilariously blunt.
“A chance to win $500,000,” he said, per Andrew Greif of the Los Angeles Times.
Whether he meant to or not, Ty Lue actually highlighted the most obvious issue with the NBA in-season tournament: there's no real reason for fans to care about it. Teams don't get any organizational advantage from their results in the tournament. No playoff positioning, draft leverage, or other helpful treats from performing well. Sure, players getting $500,000 is nice for them, but does the average 9-5 working citizen struggling to make ends meet really care whether a multi-millionaire gets a marginal amount richer?
The NBA has long been criticized for how boring the schedule tends to get in the first couple of months of the slate leading up to Christmas. Of course, the most obvious solution to increasing regular season interest would be to make regular season games more meaningful by reducing the amount of them, which would also solve another problem in the form of player rest.
But of course, that would require teams' billionaire owners to sacrifice a small margin of their profits, and what a travesty that would be.
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