The NBA in-season tournament is one of the wildest new additions to the pro sports landscape in the United States, and it’s been amazing. Having a contest within the season has broken up the action in fascinating ways, contributed to better team chemistry, and really makes the game feel different at a time a lot of fans are checked out.
Jayson Tatum vents about NBA in-season tournament’s bad tie-breaker on ‘Point Forward’
The Celtics star only has one problem with the NBA in-season tournament.
James Dator has been covering a wide range of sports for SB Nation for over a decade, with a special focus on the NFL.
Celtics star Jayson Tatum joined Andrew Iguodala and Evan Turner on The Point Forward Podcast to discuss his feelings on the in-season tournament, good and bad.
The key point of contention for Tatum comes from Boston’s game against the Bulls on November 28. In that game the Celtics were up by an alarming amount, but had to keep its stars in the game to run the score up on Chicago to try and better their point differential — which was a key tiebreaker in the tournament.
“We was in the game and I was like, I remember I tapped, I think it was Torrey Craig. I was like ‘yo bro, I don’t really want to be out here right now.’ Cause we were up 30 going into the fourth. If it was a Wednesday I would have been sitting on the bench and the younger guys would have gotten in. It just didn’t feel right.”
Not only did the tiebreaker force the Celtics to run up the score, but make the decision to hack Andre Drummond to keep running up the score — which Tatum didn’t like, and that Bulls coach Billy Donovan took huge exception to.
At the end of the day players around the league are friends. They’re die-hard competitors on the court, but there’s basic respect there. To have the tiebreaker be point differential necessitates embarrassing teams, while also overworking star players.
It’s one wrinkle that needs to be ironed out, but otherwise the in-season tournament has been amazing.
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