In-Season Tournament brings new dimension to start of the season

The inaugural In-Season Tournament will add a new dimension to the 2023-24 season.

NBA basketball returns Oct. 24. We are counting down the days like the seconds on a shot clock — literally, that’s what we’re doing. As of Oct. 1, our writers will list 24 storylines heading into the 2023-24 NBA season.

A new storyline will drop each day. Here is No. 3:

Want to know what the In-Season Tournament is all about? Start with European soccer.

Mindful of transparency, let me get it on the record I’m agnostic when it comes to soccer at all levels, European or otherwise (beyond a family picnic activity).

But the new In-Season Tournament is about a league, any league, trying to boost interest in what otherwise would be the doldrums of its schedule. And the cliché about the NBA season “really beginning on Christmas Day” made the first two months ripe for this sort of dabbling.

Contrary to initial skepticism, this won’t require all usual NBA business to halt, like the NHL when it sent players to compete in Winter Olympics past. The group play of the In-Season Tournament will unspool in the context of the normal schedule, simply with asterisks that these Tuesday and Friday contests carry some extra weight.

The knockout round should have real juice, compared at least to traditional December offerings. And the three final games in Las Vegas likely will have heightened interest on and off the court, what with cash and bragging rights on the line and, of course, Vegas in play.

Essential? Probably not. But it doesn’t seem like anything that will cannibalize interest in the NBA playoffs, about a half year away from the Finals.

And I was won over completely by the Play-In Games, another tradition-rocker added recently. Two more alleged playoff teams per conference? No thanks. But a couple of extra brass rings to tamp down noise about tanking? Yes, please. A way to goose teams that otherwise might have been content idling into a seventh or eighth seed? Oh yeah.

Then there’s the texture of it, inserting six games of one-and-done or two-and-done urgency right before some – let’s face it – frequently predictable 1-8 and 2-7 best-of-seven series.

If the In-Season Tournament can have even half that impact, it’s worth a try. Already the league is getting this much right: Going to Vegas in December rather than July.

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Steve Aschburner has written about the NBA since 1980. You can e-mail him here, find his archive here and follow him on Twitter.