The All-Tournament Team of the NBA’s inaugural in-season tournament features Giannis Antetokounmpo (Bucks), Kevin Durant (Suns), Tyrese Haliburton (Pacers), LeBron James and Anthony Davis (both of the Lakers), the league announced on Monday (via Twitter).
According to the NBA (Twitter link), the All-Tournament Team was selected by the media based on performance in both group play and the knockout rounds, with players chosen without regard to position. The full list of players receiving votes and the voters themselves can be found right here.
Antetokounmpo, Haliburton, James and Davis were all unanimous selections, which isn’t surprising considering their excellent play and how far they advanced in the tournament. The Lakers beat the Pacers in the final, with James claiming tournament MVP, Davis finishing second, and Haliburton third.
The Bucks fell in the semifinals to the Pacers, but Antetokounmpo put up his typical stellar numbers throughout the tournament, including averaging 36.0 points, 9.0 rebounds, 6.0 assists, 1.5 steals and 1.0 block while shooting 68.3% from the field in his two knockout appearances (37.2 minutes).
The final spot went to Durant, whose Suns narrowly lost in the quarterfinals to L.A. He received seven votes, with Brandon Ingram (four), Nikola Jokic (three), De’Aaron Fox (two), Damian Lillard (two), Jayson Tatum (one) and Myles Turner (one) also receiving consideration from the media panel.
This is so stupid. Imo if they don’t add stakes to tie the IST to the rest of the szn, it’ll remain in the shadow of an actual championship, actual MVP, etc . Sure the games are fun and all but the league has bit off more than it can chew in asking ppl to care abt it as if it’s the NBA finals
What can they realistically do though? Can’t really hand home court in the playoffs, with the possibility that whoever wins this fails to qualify. Can’t give an automatic spot, particularly with the play-in either.
What else is there?
The “stakes” are that the group games count towards your regular season win total, in the mind of the NBA. It’s essentially just making regular season games more impactful and meaningful in that their more paid for the younger and less salaried players, which is the entire reason the games were planned as “in-season”. Getting to compete on a national stage and thus attract national attention also matters, especially to the younger players.
Trying to tie it to the playoffs in any way would just be a bad choice. It would get more complaining than literally anything else they could reasonably do. About the best you could do is use IST placement as a tiebreaker between teams with the same record, which is just kind of meaningless if it doesn’t apply.
It’s also meant to highlight young stars and less visible teams like the Pacers and Haliburton. In that regard, it succeeded beautifully. How many people who don’t follow the Pacers or basketball as a whole knew how good Haliburton was before the tourney? How many casuals cared about him? And now his name is on everyone’s lips from how well he and the other young Pacers performed. Mathurin also got some traction. That’s why they see it as a success.
@EonADS Did it really? I don’t think that anyone who doesn’t follow or are casual NBA fans even knew, understood or watched the IST. I follow the NBA and watch all of the Suns games and even I wasn’t aware that the IST final was on Saturday. I figured the game would be some time this week.
I think it had minimal impact. NBA ratings are low especially compared to football. NFL games get in the 15-20million for primetime. The NBA barely taps 2-3 million because the regular season is so long. If they added more games to the tourney maybe it helps. You can’t guarantee a playoff spot after 8 measly games in a 82 game season.
Given that IST games drew basically double the number of television views that typical games did around this time over the last several years, yes, it did work. And if you looked at twitter, you’d know how much gushing there was over the tournament.
As for NFL games, no crap they didn’t draw as many views. It’s the same as baseball. You have to look at weekly views compared to NFL single day games, because the number of games is so different. There are like five NBA Games and ten MLB games for every 1 NFL game.
But all NBA games have been getting more views because they are showing more of them. Thanks to the writer’s strike, there is no new content to show, which is why we have more NBA games than ever on TV
This is getting out of hand
I have no earthly idea why people are getting so worked up about this.
Well it’s 2023
Humans will do human things…
why?
The only way I’d care about an IST is to cut the group play and all the complicated bs. Block out a section of the regular season schedule to be determined by the results 1/4 way or however long thru the season and seed every team 1-30 in a single elimination tournament. It would be like NBA March Madness.
They did this so that the regular season is slightly more exciting in November and December when no one is paying attention to the NBA and watching football. They accomplished that goal. People have been talking a lot about the tournament. Not everything has been positive, but there is no such thing as bad publicity. This is literally just the same as they do in Europe. It is exciting, especially for the smaller clubs, to win their domestic cup. But the ultimate goal is still the league title. In the future, I think they will find a way for the winner to automatically qualify for the playoffs.