The NBA's in-season tournament has been exciting. But the point differential tiebreaker is leading to unpleasant basketball.
heres the moment Billy Donovan approached Joe Mazzulla because Joe was intentionally fouling Andcomre Drummond during a blowout. pretty clear Billy is aware of the IST point differential reasoning, but there’s debate what # Boston needed to get to. Drummond of course misses both FTs pic.twitter.com/2U7q5Ertqm
— Rob Perez (@WorldWideWob) November 29, 2023
During the fourth quarter of the Boston Celtics' blowout win over the Chicago Bulls, the Celtics employed the "Hack-A" strategy against Bulls center Andre Drummond, a notoriously poor free-threw shooter (47.6 percent for his career). Intentionally fouling a poor shooter isn't new, but doing it while leading by more than 30 points certainly is.
The reason was that Boston needed to win by at least 23 points to advance to the next round of the in-season tournament. Coach Joe Mazzulla was uncomfortable running up the score, as was star Jaylen Brown, who told reporters, "It's tough because that's just not how the game is supposed to be played. You've got to respect your opponents."
The Golden State Warriors may have cost themself a win by focusing too much on the tournament. Needing to win by 12 points or more, they played unusually aggressively with a big lead against the Sacramento Kings, and ultimately lost the game in the final seconds.
On TNT, Candace Parker had an elegant solution. Since tournament games count for the regular season, why not use regular-season standings as the tiebreaker?
Candace Parker hates point diff as the tiebreaker, she says standings pic.twitter.com/knNiH9Qqfs
— CJ Fogler account may or may not be notable (@cjzero) November 29, 2023
While it might make the final day of the tournament less exciting and weird, switching from point differential does seem like it would spare feelings. Because as it is now, the tiebreakers mainly incentivize bad sportsmanship. Running up the score on the final night might be more fun for fans, but as Andre Drummond would likely agree, it also looks ugly.
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