A play-in adjustment idea that leads to a playoff adjustment idea

PLUS: DeMar DeRozan's daughter exacts revenge on the Raptors for making her move to Texas. Also, Spencer Dinwiddie and Kyle Kuzma escalate their beef.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

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The Roses of Heliogabalus, Lawrence Alma-Tadema, 1888

One of the few downsides of the play-in tournament is that each conference’s No. 1 seed has no idea who they’ll face in the first round until Friday night. Game 1 of that series is on Sunday.

Of course, the No. 8 seed is at a distinct scheduling disadvantage: playing either Tuesday or Wednesday, then again on Friday, then again on the road on Sunday, with no time to rest or prep for their opponent. But it’s not great that the Nos. 3-6 seeds know their opponent as soon as the regular season ends on Sunday, with 6-7 days to prepare. The No. 2 seeds find out late Tuesday, given them 3-4 days to prepare. The No. 1 seeds get one day.

A potential solution:

• Make the play-in tournament single elimination for all four teams in each conference with No. 7 facing No. 10 and No. 8 facing No. 9 on Tuesday and Wednesday of the interregnum week. You can do the West 7-10 and East 8-9 on Tuesday, the other two games on Wednesday, and swap the order every year.

• Let top seeds choose their opponents from the bottom-4 seeds in their conference. You can set this announcement for Thursday morning, which gives all teams a chance to travel and relatively equal amounts of time to prep for their opponent. Setting it for Thursday morning gives the top seeds a bit of time to process the play-in games, including any injuries or whatever happened.

The way the play-in is currently structured with No. 8 seeds being decided on Friday, drafting opponents is not really possible. So shifting to single-elimination buys you the time to do it.

I don’t know what the NBA’s hang-up with letting top seeds choose their opponents has been. They had hang-ups about drafting All-Star teams, and televising the draft, and doing a live pre-game draft … but eventually got over those qualms. Maybe that can happen here, too.

There is one obvious competitive hang-up: moving to a single-elimination play-in disadvantages the Nos. 7-8 seeds rather dramatically. Right now, the No. 7 seed is guaranteed a minimum of two postseason home games … which is exactly the minimum guaranteed for No. 7 seeds before the play-in existed. The No. 8 seed is currently guaranteed at least once, in a worst case scenario. If the play-in became single-elimination, both teams would be guaranteed just one postseason home game. The trade-off is a theoretically easier first opponent in the play-in. This makes the Nos. 9 and 10 seeds marginally more attractive: now it’d be one win and in.

You could add a third tweak to counterbalance this:

• Teams must be at least .500 to qualify for the play-in. If only nine teams in a conference are .500, the No. 7 seed gets a bye in the play-in and becomes the No. 7 seed in the conference automatically.

That would be the case in both conferences this year: both No. 10 seeds are below .500. So the Lakers and Heat would automatically be No. 7 seeds in the playoffs, and under my revised plan you’d have the 8-9 game to decide your 8th playoff team. And then the Nuggets and Bucks would pick their opponents from among the Nos. 5-8 teams in their conference.

Of course, this season both No. 10 seeds beat the No. 9 seeds. How would we react and feel had the 40-42 Bulls instead eliminated the 44-38 Heat in single-elimination? Did the Heat really earn a bye just because the Bulls fell just shy of .500?

You’d also need to build rules out for the cases in which only seven or fewer teams in a conference are above .500. Or you just acknowledge that the Nos. 9 and 10 teams have a slightly easier path into a low seed and the benefit for the Nos. 7 and 8 teams is that they may avoid playing a top-2 seed automatically since those top-2 seeds can pick their opponents.

Thoughts?

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Dinwiddie vs. Kuzma

I’ll be honest: it doesn’t feel like the play-in tournament without the Washington Wizards. Thankfully, reformed Wizard Spencer Dinwiddie and forever Wizard Kyle Kuzma are keeping the spirit of D.C. alive.

You may recall that Dinwiddie said some slightly petty things about the Wizards’ basketball culture upon getting traded to Dallas last year, and that Kuzma responded. On Wednesday Dinwiddie appears on Fanduel TV’s Run It Back. Here’s the relevant clip. It’s remarkable in its calm viciousness. It’s also full of lies — Jrue Holiday?! Kuzma “left” the Lakers because he’s more interested in fame than basketball?! But the delivery and vibe is A+. (If the video doesn’t automatically start at 8:13, you can skip to that mark.)

Damn, Dinwiddie. I didn’t know you got down like that.

I did, however, know that Kyle Kuzma gets down like this. From his Twitter thread on the matter: