The NBA play-in is working shockingly well

Teams that could and maybe should be tanking aren't. Teams that could and maybe should be coasting to a low playoff seed aren't. Games matter and it shows.

Good morning. Let’s basketball.

Spring, Edouard Manet, 1881

The stated intent of the NBA play-in tournament was to add some stakes to the stretch run of the regular season. I’m not sure the actual play-in games themselves so big a benefit to the league; it’s a total of six extra games in a league that features 1,230 in the regular season and between 60 and 105 in the actual postseason. The actual play-in tournament isn’t all that important. But what it does to the regular season certainly appears to be important.

We’ve discussed this before: what the NBA regular season needs most is stakes — a reason for fans to care about individual games. The play-in does this in two ways. By expanding the potential universe of playoff teams from 16 to 20, it pulls more teams into playoff races. By creating an additional prize for the top six teams in each conference — avoiding the play-in, which makes teams susceptible to flukey elimination — the play-in raises the stakes for teams in roughly the 4-9 range.

In the before times, the stakes of finishing 5th or finishing 7th were relatively minor unless there was a killer match-up advantage to gain. Under the play-in paradigm, 5th is a huge advantage over 7th because you avoid the play-in. That means teams will go full bore for 5th more often than not, and those stakes are reflected in a more entertaining product. It matters what happens, and that matters to capturing maximal fan attention. We see this with the Mavericks, Clippers, Warriors, Timberwolves and Heat fighting like crazy to win games despite all being somewhat comfortably in the top eight. In the before times, during the long March stretch run, some of these teams might have tried to rest if there wasn’t a specific match-up related reason to get to a certain seed. You can’t do that anymore.

But where this is most evident is in the decision whether or not to tank for a better chance at a top pick, with that top pick being Victor Wembanyama, one of the most hyped prospects of this century. And largely, teams that would be justified in tanking out to capture the fifth worst record in the league — and with it a 10.5% chance of winning Wemby — just aren’t doing it, thanks to the play-in.

Here’s the situation.