A Perfect Storm? NBA Play-In Tournament is threatened by a confluence of factors

Tanking out of the NBA Play-In Tournament hurts the regular season product.

If a team stuck on the treadmill of mediocrity should finish the regular season in 8th place, for example, should we expect that it would try to win a playoff spot to face near-certain devastation from a vastly superior 1st place team? On the flip side of the coin, this team could participate in arguably the strongest and deepest lottery in recent memory.

While it would take a huge dose of luck for a 9th or 10th place to have a realistic chance to draft Victor after losing the Play-In, most draft experts consider it likely that just getting into the lottery will yield an outstanding prospect. If teams like the Pacers or Hornets find themselves in the 7th or 8th seed, they could suddenly discover that four of their starters are ‘too injured to play.’ Surely, the thought of getting a star in the lottery is preferable to being swept in the first round.

With offseason improvement, a team like the Kings might be a realistic NBA Play-In Tournament candidate. Sacramento’s leadership has declared its intention to do all it can to break its nearly unfathomable 16-year streak of not making the playoffs, saying they “owe a playoff finish to our fans.” Would they want to impair their rebuild by making the Playoffs instead of losing the Play-In against a 7th or 8th seed for a chance to draft a future star?

It would be unseemly and unfair to a team successfully implementing a smart rebuild to miss out on adding a potentially impactful lottery pick because a superior team chooses to avoid the playoffs despite their better regular season finish.  Imagine the lower team’s fan reaction if the higher ranked team tanks the Play-In and then also defies the odds to move up in the draft.

It’s worth asking: have NBA Commissioner Adam Silver or the Board of Governors contemplated these circumstances?

If so, they must consider possible remedies, because the look of various late-season tank jobs is not something the NBA would even docilely embrace.