NBA In-Season Tournament Update: Extra Draft Pick As Prize?

That’s right, you read that right, if you win the rumored in-season tournament, your team could win an extra draft pick. If you have no idea what I am talking about, the in-season tournament could be a change coming to the NBA in the years to come. This is one of the incentives that was discussed to motivate players to play in the in-season tournament. Marc Stein reported this update on Twitter:

“All elements of the NBA’s potential midseason tournament remain in the discussion phase, but one idea proposed to incentivize teams to embrace the new competition is furnishing the tournament winner with an extra draft pick, league sources say”

“Any such measure would have to be ratified by league vote, but the league’s search is on for ways — on top of bonus compensation for players and coaches who do well in the tournament — to make teams eager to participate. A first-round pick would certainly help”

This could be big. However, one issue, this really doesn’t motivate the players. It motivates the front office, the fans, and maybe even coaches, but not the players. I mean really, think about it, that draft pick could replace a player that WORKED for it. Imagine playing hard to win this tournament to only get replaced by him later on. Sure, one could say that this motivates the front office to trickle down to the coach and eventually the players, but that is still questionable.

My idea was that they give an automatic playoff berth later for winning the NBA in-season tournament. Sure, the winner of the tournament could already be a playoff team. But what if a team like the Hornets won the tournament and now have an automatic playoff bid. That would be exciting and it motivates everyone organization to win the damn thing. Just a thought, but this seems to be catching some traction. We’ll be updating the situation when we hear things, but this looks like a very real possibility at the moment.

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