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The NBA may be pulling a Bud Selig-esque move.
Shams Charania of The Athletic reported Tuesday that the NBA Board of Governors has discussed a proposal that would involve using in-season tournament results as a tiebreaker for the actual NBA playoffs.
The first playoff tiebreaker is currently the regular season head-to-head matchup result between teams. But Charania notes that the league is polling GMs on the possibility of using the round to which a team advances in the in-season tournament as that first tiebreaker instead. Other options are reportedly on the table too, including using the IST result as a lower-level tiebreaker (after the head-to-head result).
The NBA just debuted the in-season tournament this season with the Los Angeles Lakers beating the Indiana Pacers in the December “championship” game. Though the league added in some incentives for the players to take it more seriously, the in-season tournament seems like a distant memory now with the real playoffs about to begin.
At the time of the this year’s tournament, we heard some star players clamor for higher stakes such as an automatic playoff bid for the winner. While the NBA may not be ready to go quite that far, it sounds like a real possibility that future ISTs will have a hand in determining crucial playoff seeding.
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