The NBA All-Star game may have made an in-season tournament more viable

The 2020 NBA All-Star game may have inadvertently shown the path to an in-season tournament might be more viable than previously thought.

Every year the argument is the same. The players in the NBA All-Star game don’t care, so why should we? It’s a glorified skills exhibition and nobody but the rare tryhard plays a lick of defense, so what’s the point of watching guys pal around with their buddies on the court and MAYBE given two or three minutes of effort if the game is close late?

To be fair, it’s a reasonable argument. If high-scoring, no-defense basketball games aren’t your thing, the NBA All-Star game surely won’t appeal to you and perhaps a 58-55 NCAA slugfest between Iowa and Minnesota is more your speed.

Again, most years it’s a valid complaint. This year the NBA decided to introduce a twist, and what a twist it was. It’s the Elam Ending, which sets a target score at a certain point in the game, in this case the start of the fourth quarter. The great Zach Lowe writes more about the Elam Ending here.

In honor of Kobe Bryant, the target was set at the score of the leading team, plus 24.

In the case of this game, Team Giannis had 133 points after three quarters, which meant the first to 157 won.

To add some drama to the mix, each quarter was essentially played independently for charity. There was a running tally of the score for the end of the game to apply the Elam Ending, but the score for each quarter was reset, and the winning team of each quarter secured money for their charity of choice.

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I’ll be honest, the changes seemed unnecessary and like the NBA was tweaking with an unexciting but tried and true format (just a regular basketball game) for no real reason.

By halftime, with both teams winning a quarter, each charity (Team LeBron played for Chicago Scholars, Team Giannis played for After School Matters) had secured $100,000 each.

Nice, but they could have also just given both charities $100,000 and not much would have been different.

Things changed in the third quarter. A razor-thin margin late led to actual strategic adjustments and Team LeBron head coach Nick Nurse called for an intentional foul of Russell Westbrook in the final seconds to send him to the line and give his team an opportunity for a late score to win the quarter.

Seeing actual strategy in an All-Star game, let alone late in the third quarter of said game, was stunning.

This set up for a scintillating fourth quarter. We finally found the answer to a question nobody had really ever asked, because nobody could ever imagine such a thing would happen: What would happen if all the best players in the world played a game together, and played like it mattered?

The intensity ratcheted up. Chris Paul somehow dodged a technical foul. Kyle Lowry was a charge-drawing machine (in an All-Star game!). We saw multiple coach’s challenges and a late review of an incredible block from Giannis Antetokounmpo on LeBron James, as we see below.

There could have been a combination of reasons for this surge in intensity and competitiveness. Maybe it was a collective tribute to the late great Kobe Bryant, whose presence lingered everywhere this weekend (as did Gianna Bryant, as the two teams wore 24 and 2 on all their jerseys to remember them).

It could have been the added impetus of playing for these kids who were on hand watching (who can forget the chants of “Team LeBron” in the final seconds of one of the most intense and hard-fought games of the season?), or simply declaring a winner of each quarter meant more different things to play for and win, the competitive combination made for a spectacular experience.

This leads to the following question: If the Elam Ending can revitalize the NBA All-Star game, what else could it be used for?

Regular season games are probably out of the question. This seems like something reserved for special events, like perhaps the much-discussed (and widely panned) in-season tournament that NBA commissioner Adam Silver has been pushing for.

Per NBA.com, the following is their proposal for this tournament:

"The proposal calls for teams to play eight divisional games in the group stage of the event, which would begin Nov. 24, 2021 and continue through Dec. 11. (The NBA said the dates are tentative.) The group stage games – four home, four away – would count toward a team’s regular-season total.The six division winners and two wild cards would qualify for the quarterfinals on Dec. 13 and 14, 2021. Semifinals would be played as a doubleheader on Dec. 16 and the title game would be played two days later – with the semis and finals at a neutral site like Las Vegas. Players on the winning team would split $15 million; the winning coaching staff would split $1.5 million.The NBA said that there is the potential for “additional prizing for players on the remaining final four teams” and that other incentives for teams and fans were “to be determined.”"

It’s a lot. And the structure of such an event probably leaves something to be desired, but the biggest issue is getting the players to buy into the idea of adding games to an already overstuffed season, and more intense games at that.

Shorter incentivized periods could go a long way towards getting players on board. It could also add to the competitive level of some games. In this structure, we may find some teams are drastically mismatched especially in the group round. After all, that’s basketball.

However if the Los Angeles Lakers are playing, for example, to win quarters on behalf of LeBron James’s I Promise School, and the divisional rival Golden State Warriors are playing on behalf of Stephen Curry‘s Eat. Learn. Play. Foundation, maybe there’s a bit more interest from the superstars to play and play hard.

Throw in some bonus money per quarter for each player, and now you’ve got something that both stars and the league’s rank and file can get behind.

It’s something that likely needs to be workshopped in the G-League, the NBA’s laboratory. But it may be an outside the box solution if the NBA truly wants to give this in-season tournament idea a shot.