NBA In-Season Tournament: It’s the truly dumb idea nobody wanted or needs. (Bad name, too) | Opinion

The dumb new thing in basketball inexplicably was an early imperative of Adam Silver’s when he became NBA commissioner almost 10 years ago. It finally comes to fruition this week and, after years and endless meetings to workshop it and get it just right, it is unveiled to concocted fanfare with the following official name:

NBA In-Season Tournament.

Gets to the point, give it that.

They rejected my ideas, which included NBA Disruption Derby and Court of Confusion.

The prize to the winning team will be called the NBA Cup. (Again: 10 years to come up with that.)

Anticipation and excitement reaches a boil ahead of Friday’s first tournament games, by which I mean most fans are barely aware of the new initiative and not even bothering to feign interest. The league is trying to gin up enthusiasm. It just unveiled special In-Season Tournament court designs for all 30 teams, which broadcast partners like ESPN dutifully reported as major, exciting news.

The Miami Heat, in case you didn’t know, is lumped in East Group B with four other teams, and its first tournament game is at home Friday night vs. the Washington Wizards. Players will be wearing tournament-specific uniforms, which I would only bet a thousand dollars will be available for sale in the merch store.

Imagining excited Heat fans arriving for the game Friday breaking into spontaneous chants as they cross Biscayne Boulevard to the arena: “In-Season Tournament!” and “Let’s win the IST!” Oh, and look at that homemade sign: “No Place To Be Like East Group B!”

Wonder if Jimmy Butler will debut a new hairdo for the occasion?

Will coach Erik Spoelstra retrofit winning the In-Season Tournament as a long-held franchise goal in keeping with Heat Culture?

No doubt Miami, which loves banners, is reserving rafter space for the NBA Cup flag, which will surely rank up there in prestige with any Southeast Division banner ever made.

Each team’s four group-stage games this month will winnow the tournament down to eight teams advancing to the knockout stage in December.

Players are paid extra for the tournament games. The team that wins it all on Dec. 9 in Vegas will get a $500,000 bonus per player. It’s not nothing, but it almost is. (Steph Curry makes about $634,000 per game. during the season.)

The whole thing is dumb because it’s a made-up event nobody asked for or needed, for a trophy players are not excited about.

Memphis guard Marcus Smart on winning the NBA Cup: “Being completely honest, nobody cares about it. It’s the big one that we care about.”

Acknowledges Silver: “Traditions aren’t created overnight.”

In this case, the newborn “tradition” was created because the NBA will be open to a new media-rights deal after the 2024-25 season, reportedly will be seeking a $75 billion windfall, and believes the In-Season Tournament will be an added bell and whistle — a shiny new thing to delight wold-be broadcast partners in a bidding war.

The league also hopes it will artificially goad fans to get excited about the NBA at a time on the calendar the NFL dominates.

The 67-game In-Season Tournament is not only unnecessary, it isn’t even a separate tournament, really. It only has the specially painted courts and tourney-specific unis to make you think so.

Group stage and knockout results starting Friday night will count in the regular NBA standings just like a usual game. Only the In-Season Tournament championship game will not; that will be an added 83rd game.

The NBA dreams this could someday become what the Champions League is in European soccer, an in-season separate entity that is a compelling, huge attraction on its own -- a dream ambitious, if wildly unlikely.

More likely, the In-Season Tournament will undergo tweaks to make it better — maybe starting with a new name? — assuming the whole dubious idea survives to see a second season and isn’t quietly retired as the failed experiment they’ll pretend never happened.