Playin' in, explained

The Blob is nothing if not civic-minded ("Coulda stopped at 'nothing'," you're saying), and so, as a public service, here is an explanation of the NBA's Play-In Thingy, which begins tonight with our very own Indiana Pacers hosting the Charlotte Hornets and the Boston Celtics hosting Charlotte:

* The Play-In Thingy involves eight teams, four of whom wouldn't have made the NBA playoffs because they finished outside the top eight in their conferences, and four of whom actually would be playoff teams because they are the No. 7 and No. 8 seeds in their conferences.

* There will be three games in each conference. The Nos. 7 and 8 seeds play each other in the first game, the Nos. 9 and 10 seeds play each other in the second game, and then there will be a third game between the losers of the first games and the winners of the second games. The winner of those games get the No. 8 seeds in their respective conferences.

This of course means the Nos. 7 and 8 seeds in each conference, which used to be in like Flynn, are no longer in like anything. If they lose two games in the kinda-sorta-but-not-really-playoffs, they fail to make the OK-now-for-the-actual playoffs.

You've gotta figure this would really frost the Nos. 7 and 8 seeds' cookies. You play for months and months and months on end -- more months than most wars last, frankly -- only to learn your previously guaranteed playoff berth is no longer guaranteed?

Even if, like this year, you're the Boston Celtics?

They must be lovin' this in pahkin-the-cah country. They must be ready to make parquet out of whoever dreamed up this crazy scheme, and whoever's to blame for it.

The Blob says the latter culprits are mainly the Philadelphia 76ers, who turned tanking into an art form back when they unleashed the Cult of The Process on the league. The Process involved putting the cruddiest product imaginable on the floor while looking toward brighter days via the NBA draft. The more losses, the more lottery picks; the more lottery picks, the better the end product somewhere down the road.

In other words, they turned an old axiom on its head: Past performance would guarantee future results.

The Play-In Thingy is a frontal assault on that sort of manipulation of the system. The thinking is, if you can add a couple more teams in each conference to the playoff mix -- or even the kinda-sorta playoff mix -- you give four more teams less incentive to Process their way through the last weary weeks of the season.

The Sixers, of course, no longer have to worry about that. They're the top seed in the East.

Which means tanking works. 

Which is in turn why the Play-In Thingy is now a thing.

Which in turn, also, means the Blob can ask an apparently unrelated question: Remember that famous picture from back in the day of Doctor J (the Sixers) grabbing Larry Bird (the Celtics) by the throat?

This is kinda the rerun.