NBA In-Season Tournament

The NBA In-Season tournament group play has just ended giving us the matchups for Monday and Tuesday night. There were three group winners and one wildcard for each conference. The Boston Celtics, Milwaukee Bucks, and the Indiana Pacers won their groups so they automatically get a spot. The New York Knicks were the fourth Eastern Conference team to make the tourney. On the West Coast, the winners of the groups were the LA Lakers, the New Orleans Pelicans, and the Sacramento Kings. The Phoenix Suns secured the wild card spot in the Western Conference. 

There was a lot of controversy about these games and the implications they had.  Especially the Boston Celtics game against the Chicago Bulls. The Celtics sat in second place behind the Orlando Magic who had already completed their four games and sat at the top of Group C at 3-1. The Bulls had already been mathematically eliminated from the tourney however the Celtics had a chance to win the group. Since teams could end up with the same record in groups, the NBA implemented a scoring system in place in the case of a tie. The team who scored more points will advance in the case of a tiebreaker according to the rules that are stated on NBA.com. The Celtics could win the group if they beat the Bulls by 23+ points and the Brooklyn Nets beat the Toronto Raptors by eight points or less. Seems like a lot to understand, don’t worry we’re all in the same boat. 

The Celtics took a commanding lead throughout the game and were leading by as much as 20. However, 20 wasn’t enough to win the group so head coach of the Celtics Joe Muzella told his players to use the hack-a-shaq strategy on center Andre Drummond who isn’t a good free throw shooter. To the Celtics point, it worked. Drummond missed many free throw attempts in the fourth quarter already down by 20 points with seven minutes left.  This allowed the Celtics to score more points and reach the 23-point threshold they needed to advance in the tourney. This drew criticism from Bull’s head coach Billy Donovan who walked to Joe and had a word. 

There are unwritten rules in every spot and as a professional player, you are supposed to follow them. Trying to score more points when already up by a lot is a big no-no in the NBA. But that’s exactly what the Celtics were doing. One of the Celtic’s best players, Jaylen Brown, had mentioned the same thing. He felt like it was a disrespect to the game of basketball even going as far as saying “That’s not how the game is supposed to be played.”

Whether we like it or not the In-season tournament seems like it is here to stay so if you don’t want teams to run up the score better start playing some defense.