New Orleans Pelicans: Is Luka Doncic right about the play-in tournament?

The New Orleans Pelicans have won three in a row and are now just one game back of the Golden State Warriors for the final play-in spot in the Western Conference.

Zion Williamson has put the team on his back and would love to carry them to the playoffs but there is one guy who isn’t so excited about the prospect.

Luka Doncic criticized the play-in tournament saying:

"“I don’t understand the idea of a play-in. You play 72 games to get into the playoffs, then maybe you lose two in a row and you’re out of the playoffs. So I don’t see the point of that.”"

I have to admit that Doncic has a point. It does devalue the regular season when a 10th place team can get hot at the right time and undo a losing season.

But there are also some benefits for the NBA overall, and this season, to the Pelicans.

New Orleans Pelicans: How does the NBA play-in tournament work?

In the new format, the 7th and 8th place teams will play each other to determine who gets the 7th seed. The 9th and 10th seeds also play and the winner of that gets to play the loser of the first game.

So let’s say that the New Orleans Pelicans were to get the 10th seed, they would have to beat the 9th seed, then beat the loser of the 7 vs. 8 game twice to claim the 8th seed and get into the playoffs.

There have been seasons when there was a wide margin between the 7th and 10th seeds, and in that case, it does seem a bit unfair that the 7th seed could then get knocked out of the playoffs by losing a few games in a row.

But the NBA is trying to keep more teams competitive and more fans interested down the stretch, and this certainly does that, as the Pelicans’ slim playoff hopes would be pretty much nonexistent under the traditional playoff rules.

I like that the NBA is trying to tinker with the playoff format, baseball has shown that getting more teams involved makes the end of the regular season much more interesting.

But Luka Doncic also has a solid point, so the NBA may have to find some way to further reward the 7th seed to make the regular season more meaningful.