La-La Clip-Clip "leads" PHO 75-41 halfway through the 3rd Q. Devin Booker's not playing, I don't know who if anyone else is not leading for the league-best "Suns." It's a meaningless game. PHO long ago clinched the top spot in the West. La-La Clip-Clip are guaranteed a spot in the play-in, maybe they didn't play key players either.

It's a discounted game but the fans who bought tickets don't get a price discount and that bothers me. Adam Silver is the finest human being that I know of other than my son and he is the greatest commissioner in the history of professional sports, too. So I was heartened to hear him "reading my letters out loud" (figuratively) today:

 

 

 I would disagree with the specific suggestion Adam made, as he has previously, for an in-season tournament. In my view, and I believe beyond a reasonable doubt in the players view, the solution is not more games, it is fewer games. Adam's solution this season was the play-in tournament, which adds one to three extra games, and he has been advocating for some time the in-season tournament on the model of the execrable European football tournaments. The domestic tournaments are just the worst and the NBA doesn't have the option of a pan-continental, or in the NBA's case an inter-continental, tournament that brings new teams to play the NBA's teams. The only thing worse than star players sitting out is star players who are lost in the middle of the regular 82-game schedule to injuries that keep them out of multiple games, sometimes half a dozen, sometimes a dozen or more, sometimes an entire season. I know that Adam cares about his star players and every player but these proposals by him are not in the interests of the players, or the "consumers," the fans. They are solely in the interest of his employers, the owners. Adam will never get the owners to agree to cut back the regular season to say 58 games (two apiece against every other team) or an odd number such as 60 or 65 with more games within conferences and divisions. Cutting out 24 revenue stream events, or 22 or 17, is an absolute non-starter for the owners and would cause a revolt. But what the solution is not, is more games. With more games you're going have more star players skipping the newfangled in-season tournaments.