The stars are definitely out for the NBA’s Play-In Tournament, even if they don’t necessarily want to be there, but ESPN and TNT certainly aren’t complaining.  

Now in the fourth iteration of its current format, the entry point for the NBA playoffs features three former league Most Valuable Players in the Lakers’ LeBron James (above, left), the Warriors’ Stephen Curry (above, right), and the 76ers’ Joel Embiid—in addition to a vast collection of other high-profile stars such as the Heat’s Jimmy Butler, the Pelicans’ Zion Williamson, and the Lakers’ Anthony Davis. The Play-In Tournament will start Tuesday with Western Conference games and conclude Friday. 

Potential Spike

That high-level of star power for this initial stage of the postseason could provide the NBA and its national media rightsholders, ESPN and TNT, a sizable boost entering the rest of the playoffs, which begin Saturday. Last year’s six total Play-In Tournament games (on the two networks) averaged 2.64 million viewers, up 5% from 2022, and an additional spike is certainly possible given the players and teams involved.

The Play-In Tournament is far from the preferred scenario for the involved teams, as for the No. 9 and 10 seeds in each conference in particular a single loss will eliminate those teams from the rest of the playoffs. But it also beats missing the playoffs entirely, which for several of the involved franchises was a very real possibility in the final weeks of the regular season. 

“For us to end the season 12 games over .500—13 if you count the championship in the In-Season Tournament—I mean, with everything we’ve been through, that’s a pretty good season for us,” James said.

Added Warriors coach Steve Kerr, “We’re happy to have a shot.” 

Dream Scenario

The Lakers and Warriors could potentially meet in a rematch of last year’s high-profile Western Conference playoff semifinals. That would require the Lakers, the No. 8 seed, losing to the No. 7 Pelicans in New Orleans, and then the No. 10 Warriors upsetting the No. 9 Kings on the road. But that matchup would again bring together two of the league’s foremost personalities in James and Curry. A Lakers-Warriors play-in game in 2021 remains the viewership standard-bearer for an individual game in this part of the postseason, averaging 5.62 million viewers.

“The chess game has been ignited and we’re all for it,” said Lakers coach Darvin Ham. Los Angeles’s game against the Pelicans tomorrow will be a repeat of a Sunday game that solidified the Lakers at the No. 8 seed. 

There are two big reasons why the NBA is heading into the playoffs with yet another attendance record to gloat about: The debut of the In-Season Tournament and the evolution of the Play-In Tournament, which is entering its fifth year.

Total attendance for the 2023–24 season, which ended Sunday, was 22,538,518. That’s about 300,000 more than last season, which had already broken the season-long mark set in ’17–18. The months of November and March had record turnouts, the former largely buoyed by group-play IST games. “Usually, you see a very strong start of the schedule and then maybe you’ll see a little bit of a lull in the November and December months, before picking back up going into the finish,” Jonathan Tillman, the NBA’s executive vice president of team marketing and business operations, tells Front Office Sports.

As the season concluded, tight sprints to the finish in both conferences saw 19 of the league’s 20 playoff seeds still up for grabs as late as last week. “There’s a lot of movement there and that just creates more interest in those games across the board,” Tillman says.

Is Bigger Better?

If the scheduling tweaks have been so successful already, the NBA should surely be considering some form of expansion for those tournaments, right? Maybe. “We’re very happy with the changes that have been made over the last couple of years,” Tillman says. “And at this point, it’s a matter of just monitoring those successes, further evaluating, and then deciding from there what tweaks in the margin could be made for next season.”

Whatever the case may be, don’t expect the NBA to remain stagnant. After the first season of play-in games, in 2020, the league quickly doubled the number of participating teams. And after just one rendition of the in-season tournament, the event has already been rebranded as the Emirates NBA Cup. The format for next season’s NBA Cup hasn’t been released yet, so there remains potential for changes in Year 2.

The Knicks are once again a relevant factor on the NBA landscape, extending what has been a year of operational successes across many parts of James Dolan’s sports and entertainment empire. 

The Dolan-controlled Knicks are entertaining the playoffs as the Eastern Conference’s No. 2 seed, with New York’s 50 regular-season wins marking its best campaign since 2013. With that has come a series of boosts, including a 2% climb in attendance, a palpable jump in energy from Knicks fans at both Madison Square Garden and in road arenas, and an increase in average per-game revenues for parent company Madison Square Garden Sports. 

The NBA has operated for much of this century without the Knicks—traditionally one of its most popular teams and an anchor in the largest U.S. media market—being competitive on the court, and often existing as a sideshow off it. But three of the team’s seven playoff appearances since 2002 have come in the last four seasons, and now the Knicks will play the winner of the Play-In Tournament matchup between the 76ers and Heat. 

Despite the recent and abrupt departure of MSG Sports president and chief operating officer David Hopkinson at the beginning of the month, the trajectory and outlook of the Knicks is rising, even before accounting for the forthcoming playoff games.

“We are seeing overall positive momentum across our business and expect that to continue for the remainder of the fiscal year,” said Victoria Mink, MSG Sports’ chief financial officer, at the company’s last earnings call. 

On Sunday, Knicks coach Tom Thibodeau put a finer point on the team’s situation when it passed up a potentially easier postseason matchup with a No. 3 seed, instead ending the regular season with a five-game winning streak to clinch that second slot.

“When you have competitors, it doesn’t matter,” Thibodeau said. “Competitors compete. It doesn’t matter if it’s a game, if it’s one-on-one, a shooting game, if it’s dominoes, some crazy podcast. They compete. You don’t have to wind these guys up and that’s what I love about them.”

Expanding Empire

Dolan is hardly a beloved figure in New York, as he has frequently clashed with the NBA and NHL, former Knicks icons, and individual fans. But there is no denying the results he has posted over the last year. The NHL’s Rangers, the Knicks’ sister franchise, finished on Monday what was the best regular season in team history.

The Sphere in Las Vegas, meanwhile, debuted last fall as a jaw-dropping spectacle, was quickly embraced by multiple sports properties, and will begin its second major artist residency Thursday with Phish staging a four-show stint to follow the 40-concert run that U2 completed last month.