After months of anticipation, the inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament has come and gone. The Lakers topped the Pacers to claim the NBA Cup, and LeBron James earned the tournament's first-ever MVP award. Despite the initial skepticism from pundits and fans, the tournament was a success through and through. Still, while we're nearly a year away from the next iteration of the NBA's newest creation, it doesn't hurt to start brainstorm ways to make it better. CBS Sports' NBA staff sat down to offer ideas on how to improve things:
Group teams by divisions
A simple but necessary tweak that could easily carry into the 32-team league we all think is coming: tournament groups should just be divisions. Would it be balanced? Not necessarily, but that's a small price to pay for sustainable rivalries and fan familiarity. One of the challenges this tournament is facing is how to distinguish these games from typical regular-season fare. Colorful courts have helped, but consistent matchups against heated rivals would mean much more. —Sam Quinn
Make knockout rounds 'extra' games
While the logistics would be complicated, I think the NBA should figure out a way so that only the group stage games count as regular season contests, and the knockout rounds are all extra. The obvious retort is that two teams would have to play three extra games compared to everyone else, but the current system isn't equitable either, and at least those teams would be rewarded monetarily.
Take the Knicks and Timberwolves for example. Only 80 games were locked in this season, with two to be flexed in later depending on how teams fared in the group stage of the IST.
The Knicks' "reward" for making the knockout round was an extra road game against each of the Bucks and Celtics. They lost both and will finish the regular season with 40 home games and 42 road games. On the other hand, the Timberwolves were eliminated in the group stage, and, as a result, got additional games against the Spurs and Grizzlies. They easily won both to boost their lead atop the Western Conference.
Those results could have a significant impact on the playoff standings by the end of the season.
Again, I'm not sure how you make that work, especially considering the league would likely not be interested in reducing the amount of regular season games. I do think it's something that they should look into though to avoid these type of discrepancies in the future. —Jack Maloney
Give the winner a playoff advantage
The biggest question people had about this tournament was will the players care? Based on how passionate the Lakers and Pacers played in the championship game, I think that washes away any concern around that topic. However, one way to make the group stage even more competitive would be to raise the stakes of the prize at the end of it.
I think the league should look into tying some sort of playoff advantage into this for the championship team. If the team who wins the tournament makes the postseason, they should be allowed to pick their first round opponent. Can you imagine the buzz that would create? It still incentivizes teams to compete for the rest of the season so that they make the playoffs, and once there they get the advantage of picking who they play in the first round. —Jasmyn Wimbish
Eliminate red courts!
The crazy, colorful courts worked. The goal was to get your attention, to signal that these weren't just ordinary regular-season games. I bet some of those who laughed at the bright blue and yellow one in Indiana had come around by the time Tyrese Haliburton was going bananas against the Celtics in crunch time. Even the worst ones served a purpose, since they got people talking about a tournament that, in its first iteration, needed all the publicity it could get.
That said, I have three simple words for commissioner Adam Silver: No more red. —James Herbert
