This season, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver and his league office colleagues decided to shake things up a bit with the implementation of the first-ever In-Season Tournament, which is currently in its knockout stages. Silver has long been looking for a way to address the NBA's perceived lack of entertainment value in the pre-Christmas portion of the schedule, and thus far, it seems as though the In-Season Tournament is delivering its intended results.
Silver recently spoke on why he is pleased with the way the tournament has played out so far.
“When we first started, people said, ‘What are you going to be looking for to decide whether this is something that you think will be successful and that you'll want to move forward?', and I said, ‘Most importantly, let's look to the competitiveness of the players, the enthusiasm on the floor, the buy-in,' and we're getting that in spades,” said Silver, via SiriusXM NBA Radio on X. “I feel fantastic about that… so far so good.”
The main question about the tournament going into this season regarded what player's motivation would be to “try harder” than they normally would in the regular season. Of course, winning $500,000 is nice, but does the average working-class fan really have a vested interest in whether or not multi-millionaires get a marginal amount richer?
However, the results have been hard to argue with so far, including a highly entertaining game on Monday between the Boston Celtics and the Indiana Pacers which went right down to the wire.
The In-Season tournament will reach its conclusion later this week in Las Vegas.
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