The NBA post-season begins a two-month plus gauntlet tonight with the whimper that is called the SoFi Play-In Tournament. Royalties aside, this might have been better monickered as So Few. These are no more than the 13th through 20th best teams in a 30-team league, after all. And those that emerge by week’s end will be “rewarded” with matchups with two 60-win teams, a rapidly maturing freak named Victor Wembanyama and a now-healthy Jayson Tatum. But hey, it’s a way for the 12 better squads to nurse their wounds, and for Prime Video to have the spotlight shine squarely on their state of the art two-story studio that now dominates a soundstage once reserved for movie production.
To be sure, there are those that are actually looking forward to the challenge, which NBA.com’s Jeff Zillgitt noted yesterday:
Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra described the Play-In game format with one word. “Harrowing,” he said…Miami plays at the Charlotte Hornets on Tuesday (7:30 p.m. ET, Prime Video) in an Eastern Conference game in the 2026 SoFi Play-In Tournament. Spoelstra, the longest tenured coach with the same team in the NBA, added: “It’s like the NCAA (Tournament). It’s like playing in the Olympics. The one-game eliminations, they’re harrowing. There’s nothing else. It’s Game 7.”
The Heat know that path as well as any team. They’re making their fourth consecutive appearance in the Play-In format, and Spoelstra’s Heat have found success: three playoff appearances as the No. 8 seed, including a trip to the NBA Finals in 2023. That year, they beat the top-seeded Milwaukee Bucks in the first round, No. 5-seeded New York Knicks in the Eastern Conference semifinals and the No. 2-seeded Boston Celtics in the East Finals before losing to the Denver Nuggets in the NBA Finals.
But for every Heat Nation booster, much like in physics, there’s an equal and opposite reaction from the other end of the country–especially when the unique circumstances of this year’s risk/rewards are considered. Such was the focus of the piece recently authored by SPORTS ILLISTRATED’s Jeremy Brener:
The Portland Trail Blazers are another team that should be angling pretty openly for losses. The bottom five in the West will make it nearly impossible for Portland to miss the play-in, but the Blazers only keep their 2026 first-round pick if it’s in the lottery,” Bleacher Report contributor Dan Favale wrote.
“The incentive to lose those win-or-go-home games is strong. … And in a format like the play-in, that could be enough to cost the Blazers their pick. “They have some intriguing young talent, but [Deni] Avdija is the only real star (or player who even looks like a future star). Contention will almost certainly require another, and the 2026 draft could offer several.”
So while the Heat will likely be going all out in a road tile against the intriguing but arguably still immature Hornets in the first half of tonight’s doubleheader, the Blazers’ level of enthusiasm in a similar sich visiting the Valley of the Sun could warrant close attention. And if they happen to lose to Mat Ishbia’s economically motivated schizophrenics, on Friday night they get a shot to perform for their own fans against the loser of the Warriors-Clippers tilt that will take place tomorrow night within walking distance of the actual SoFi Center.
And if one is to believe the propaganda that was offered up yesterday by NBC SPORTS BAY AREA’s Dalton Johnson, they could be running into another veteran team with motivation:
After losing to the LA Clippers 115-110 Sunday night at Intuit Dome, the two teams will play each other at the same arena three days later on Wednesday night as the 9/10 game in the NBA play-in tournament. The first good news coming out of a loss that ended the Warriors’ regular season with a 37-45 record is getting to stay in one place instead of immediately hopping on a plane.
In just their fifth game of the season, the Warriors beat the Clippers by 19 points, 98-79, at Chase Center on Oct. 28. But that was a game in which Jimmy Butler led the Warriors with 21 points, and James Harden was the Clippers’ top scorer with 20 points. Neither will be on the court come Wednesday night in LA.
Since that early-season matchup, the Warriors haven’t beaten the Clippers once in the three matchups they faced one another. However, none of those three losses have changed the Warriors’ confidence going into yet another do-or-die situation in the playoffs. Why? Everything changes when Curry is on your side, as well as the rest of the Warriors’ championship pedigree around him.
And if you’re the NBA–especially Prime Video–you’re hoping you can get as much of Curry as possible. In particular during a week when Deni Avdija is trying to get a dubious fan base to believe he’s the second coming of Bill Walton.
For those of us who have somehow survived the incredulous amount of de facto tanking that has been shamelessly evident during the season’s final weeks, the very idea of possible tanking in the post-season should be abhorrent. To be sure, true pros like Spoelstra and Curry aren’t. But the Blazers and Suns? The befuddled Orlando Magic and the injury-plagued Sixers, the East’s 8-7 contenders that will lead into the California Clash manana noche? Well, don’t bet against it.
But hey, conspiracy theories, warts and all, it’s post-season basketball. You’ll be watching, along with the 12 best teams in the league. Go get something delivered to celebrate it.
Courage…