NBA’s in-season tournament needs playoff stakes, not goofy red courts

The only thing worse than a bad idea is a good idea in the hands of a committee. It’s a fundamental law of human nature. The best way to beat genius to a bloody pulp is to submit it for approval. There is an inverse relationship between the time it takes to solve a problem and the number of people tasked with finding the solution. Measure the shortest distance between Point A and Point B, multiply by it by 2π, and reconvene next week. Refreshments are in the back.

Forgive me if I sound bitter. I’m still battling some lingering effects of the Sixers’ court on Tuesday night. Normally, sports writing doesn’t rank among the more hazardous professions in society. But then, sports writing normally doesn’t require you to spend your evening shielding your eyes from 4,700 square feet of hardwood painted the loudest possible shade of red.

» READ MORE: No cause for alarm when it comes to the Sixers — they had a tough stretch

“It’s ... bright,” Pacers coach Rick Carlisle said when asked for his evaluation of the new floor at the Wells Fargo Center.

It wasn’t just bright. It was redder than a stack of Sam Bankman-Fried’s quarterly reports. Every second of the Sixers’ 132-126 loss to the Pacers looked like the last thing a prizefighting bull sees before leaving the Earth. The thing looked like something you’d get if you asked an intern to paint a Target.

Or, if you asked a committee to plan an In-Season Tournament.

Objective: Inject some pre-Christmas drama into a long slog of an NBA season by creating an In-Season Tournament featuring all 30 teams.

Solution: Gather 20,000 Philly sports fans in a building and force them to spend 2.5 hours staring at the angriest color on the spectrum.

It was a microcosm, the court. Conceived with good intentions. Birthed as a monstrosity.

That’s the In-Season Tournament in a nutshell. I had high hopes for the thing. I really did. When the NBA first went public with its desire to increase the stakes of some of its regular-season games, I was fascinated to see the direction it would take. The obvious model was the NCAA conference championship tournaments, which have turned into a gold mine, in terms of both entertainment and cold, hard cash. Championship week is one of those things that seems so obvious that you wonder why it took everyone so long to lean so hard into it. Surely, the NBA could figure out a way to replicate that drama.

The only question was the stakes. That’s always the question. That’s why we watch sports. The bright lights, the big cities, the celebrities — all of that means something only because of the stakes. Same goes for the individual excellence. We aren’t just watching the best athletes on the planet find creative and limit-testing ways to put a ball of leather into a 10-foot hoop. We’re watching them do it because we are invested in what they are pursuing. The NBA wanted to inject the early regular season with that level of investment.

Didn’t they?

If they did, they asked the wrong people how to do it. For all of the hype, for all of the promotion, for all of the willingness of the players and coaches to pretend to play along, the first round of the NBA’s In-Season Tournament has mostly served to remind everyone that the thing has no real purpose. Because it has no stakes. The winning team gets a trophy and carries on with its season. The winning players get $500,000 and try not to spend it all on Amazon. The 29 other teams get to shrug and focus on making the playoffs.

» READ MORE: The Sixers wanted Jrue Holiday. Daryl Morey’s goal was to give himself a chance at the next one.

What do the fans get? That’s the real question. The answer is where the NBA has got it backward. Fans don’t care if Joel Embiid and Tyrese Maxey get a little bump in their biweekly direct deposit. They care about the ultimate success of the team.

In this initial incarnation of the tournament, the NBA has poured most of its material focus into incentivizing players. To be fair, they’ve done a good job of that. To most of the players on the Sixers roster, half a million bucks isn’t nothing. It matters. And if it matters to the guys who aren’t making Embiid money, it matters to the guys like Embiid. So, yeah, it works.

The biggest challenge facing the NBA is giving its customers something to care about. The viewers. The fans. We care about Alcorn State-Grambling in the SWAC championship because the winner moves closer to the ultimate goal. It’s a chapter in a story, a plot point in a drama, a reason to watch.

Last week, Pacers guard Tyrese Halliburton suggested in an interview with Yahoo! Sports that the winner of the In-Season Tournament should get a playoff spot. His mind is 100% in the right place. The NBA needs to find some meaningful team reward for winning the tournament. It could be a playoff spot. It could be home-court advantage in the playoffs. It could be a playoff tiebreaker. It could be draft position.

“My belief is that all those kinds of concepts are potentially in play going forward,” Carlisle said. “If I’m guessing, and I’m not in on these conversations because I’m not in on any committees right now, but there has to be a reconciliation with the number of games involved in the tournament and the value of a playoff spot. Going forward, it’s a great conversation. I agree with Tyrese. The more you can do to make this really meaningful, the better.”

Sixers coach Nick Nurse was similarly concerned about watering down the playoffs. But he also admitted he hadn’t thought much about it.

“A little bit like World Cup gets you to the Olympics?” Nurse said. “That’s interesting. That never even entered my mind. I feel like right now the thing has a ton of interest, maybe a lot more than I thought. I think it’s a cool thing this time of the season. I think on it’s own it’s doing OK. I guess we’ll maybe get more information as we go. ... There’s 82 games to decide who makes the playoffs, but it is interesting to think about.”

The NBA started out with a good idea. It ended up with a wannabe spectacle that falls well short of its objective.

The winner of the NCAA Tournament gets to call itself the champion of college basketball. The winner of Wimbledon gets to call him or herself the champion of grass tennis. The winner of the NBA In-Season Tournament gets half a minimum-wage check and the chance to call itself the champion that nobody will care about once the real champion is crowned.

The rest of us get to see red.