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Adam Silver Spoke to LeBron James About Play-In Tournament, Open To Tinkering After Full Season

At the end of this past season’s regular season, LeBron James raised some eyebrows when he called the play-in tournament ‘sh*t’.

The Lakers fell to the 7th place in the Western Conference, and had to take the play-in detour to the playoffs.

LeBron James on the play-in tournament: “Whoever came up with that shit needs to be fired.”

— Bill Oram (@billoram) May 3, 2021

However, the year prior – with the Lakers nowhere near the play-ins –  James thought of it as a ‘great idea’. His opinion did a 180 simply by being the one on the other side of it, now.

Per Yahoo Sports:

“One thing you can’t just do is go straight to the playoffs, because it discredits the 60-plus games that guys had fighting for that position. You got Portland. You got Memphis…New Orleans and Sacramento tinkering around there…so if there’s five or ten games left…why not those guys battle it out? Make them play each other all five games?”

The play-in tournament was a full success though, with great ratings and a lot of revenue generated for both, the NBA and the team owners. So, the play-in tournament will return next season, and Adam Silver has already spoken to LeBron James about it.

Per TMZ:

“When we spoke with Commish out in NYC this week … he told us he personally spoke with King James about the tourney — and it sounds like things are allllll good.

“We talked about it,” Silver told us. “I think at the end of the day, I understand. Especially if you went deep last year and you have that end, you have that many sort of games on your legs.”

“You’re not looking forward to more games. But, I think he understands the context of the league.”

“So, I think we wanted to get one more season under our belt that wasn’t a pandemic season, so we could really get a sense of how it works.”

“But, I’m more open to tinkering with it if necessary.”