SI:AM | The Hidden Issue With the NBA In-Season Tournament

Plus, seven plays that had the biggest impact on college football this season.

Good morning, I’m Dan Gartland. Last night was exactly what the NBA envisioned when it created the in-season tournament.

In today’s SI:AM:

😠 The biggest complaint with the NBA tourney

🏈 Seven plays that defined the college football season

🪓 Why the Panthers acted quickly with Frank Reich

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One step closer to Vegas

If you haven’t been paying attention to the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament, now is the time to tune in.

Last night marked the end of the tournament’s group stage, with the knockout round set to begin Monday. Here’s the schedule for the quarterfinals:

• Celtics at Pacers (7:30 p.m. ET Monday on TNT)
• Pelicans at Kings (10 p.m. ET Monday on TNT)
• Knicks at Bucks (7:30 p.m. Tuesday on TNT)
• Suns at Lakers (10 p.m. ET Tuesday on TNT)

The winners of those games will advance to the semifinals, which will be played in Las Vegas on Dec. 7. The championship game (also in Vegas) is Dec. 9.

Admittedly, I’ve had a tough time getting jazzed about the tournament. I think part of the reason is that only certain regular-season games double as tournament games. It would be easier to get sucked into the drama of the tournament if the games were all played in quick succession, rather than being confined to certain days of the week. (Obviously, there are practical reasons why that can’t be the case.) It also wasn’t immediately clear how seriously players would take the tournament. The competition was conceived as a way to get players and fans more engaged in early-season games, but would the $500,000 (pretax) bonus for each player on the winning team be enough incentive when dozens of players in the league make more than $30 million annually? It turns out, yes. As Knicks guard RJ Barrett put it, “If someone said you can go to Vegas and win $500K, would you wanna do that?”

Also, teams are incentivized to not take their foot off the gas—but that hasn’t been a good thing. Because the tiebreaker to determine the winners of each group was point differential, every basket counted in group-stage games. Even in games that were long decided, teams still had to play hard until the final buzzer to maximize their chances of advancing in the tournament.

That led to some awkward situations, though. Last week, DeMar DeRozan was ejected after taking issue with Pascal Siakam taking a three-point attempt in the final seconds of a game between the Bulls and Raptors that had already been decided. Last night, DeRozan’s Bulls were again on the wrong side of some point differential chicanery. Chicago was getting blown out by the Celtics, but Boston needed to win by at least 23 points to advance in the tournament. Up by 27, the Celtics kept their starters in the game for most of the fourth. That’s fine. No one is going to begrudge the Celtics for playing hard for all 48 minutes, and the added wrinkle of point differential means that fans get to see the best players on the floor more. But Boston crossed the line by intentionally fouling Andre Drummond on back-to-back possessions while leading by 30 points. The decision to send Drummond (a career 47.6% free-throw shooter) to the line led to a tense conversation between Chicago coach Billy Donovan and Boston’s Joe Mazzulla.

“He’s got to coach his team and do what he feels is right,” Donovan said after the game. “Play all the way to the end. I got no problem with that. I just thought it was putting Andre in a tough spot in a 30-point game. I didn’t like that.”

Donovan wasn’t the only one who felt icky about teams being incentivized to run up the score. After the Knicks secured the lone wild-card spot in the Eastern Conference bracket on point differential by beating the Hornets, 115–91, New York’s Josh Hart said he “didn’t like” how his team had to run up the score.

“The last couple of minutes it feels weird,” Hart said. “At a certain point, you just start chasing points, doing all that. So it kind of messes with the integrity of the game a little bit.”

Cavaliers star Donovan Mitchell and the Celtics’ Jayson Tatum also said they thought it was “weird” to keep pouring it on.

The inaugural tournament seems like it’s been a success thus far. It’s produced some good games and gotten fans and players to buy in, but it’s also clear that players have issues with the finer points of how the tournament is structured. Maybe they’ll get used to the idea of running up the score, or maybe the league will provide an alternate tiebreaker that doesn’t leave players feeling disrespected.

The best of Sports Illustrated

Why do MLB executives all dress the same?  :: Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports

• Pat Forde breaks down the seven plays that had the biggest impact on the 2023 college football season.
• Matt Verderame believes a clear favorite has emerged in the NFL MVP race.
• Stephanie Apstein has been thinking about the way baseball executives dress for three years and was finally able to turn that obsession into a story.
• Albert Breer has some insight on why Panthers owner David Tepper decided to fire coach Frank Reich so quickly.
• Bob Harig is in the Bahamas for this week’s Hero World Challenge, where Tiger Woods spoke about the proposed partnership between the PGA Tour and the PIF of Saudi Arabia as well as the health of his ankle and his possible 2024 schedule.
• Here are Chris Mannix’s latest NBA power rankings.
• Mark Cuban is reportedly selling his majority stake in the Mavericks, but will retain control of the team’s basketball operations.
• Oregon State kept things in house in hiring its replacement for football coach Jonathan Smith.

The top five...

… things I saw last night:

5. The dramatic finish to the Panthers-Maple Leafs game. Florida had a game-winning goal in the shootout waved off on a replay review, allowing Toronto to win.

4. Connor McDavid’s smooth deke on a breakaway goal.

3. Luka Dončić’s trash talk to Dillon Brooks in the middle of a play.

2. Dončić’s clutch hook shot and supremely confident quote about it.

1. Malik Monk’s game-winning shot against the Warriors that sent the Kings into the quarterfinals of the in-season tournament.

SIQ

The first Army-Navy football game was held on this date in which year?

• 1879
• 1890
• 1901
• 1914

Yesterday’s SIQ: On Nov. 28, 1929, Ernie Nevers made NFL history by scoring all of his team’s points in a 40–6 win over the Bears. Which team did the Hall of Fame fullback play for?

• Packers
• Giants
• Cardinals
• Staten Island Stapletons

Answer: Cardinals. Nevers, a fullback, had six rushing touchdowns and kicked four extra points. He also accounted for all of his team’s points the previous week in a 19–0 win over the Dayton Triangles (three touchdowns and one extra point).

Nevers played only five NFL seasons (two with the Duluth Eskimos and three with the Cardinals) before retiring but was a first-team All-Pro in all five seasons and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class in 1963.

Nevers also starred as a baseball and basketball player at Stanford and played three seasons as a pitcher for the St. Louis Browns. His pro baseball career was unremarkable (4.64 ERA), but he did play a role in the sport’s history by giving up two home runs to Babe Ruth during his 60-homer season in 1927.