Adam Silver Responds To LeBron James Criticism Of Play-In Tournament

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NBA commissioner Adam Silver had quite an entertaining week last one, especially with the 2021 NBA draft that featured several potential stars. Prior to that, the league announced the play-in tournament will be played in 2022 again, despite all the criticism it received from certain people. 

One of those was LeBron James, who claimed whoever came up with the idea should've gotten fired. The King and Silver had a conversation about it, and according to the latter, LeBron finally understood the purpose of the tournament. 

Via TMZ:

"We talked about it," Silver told us. "I think at the end of the day, I understand. Especially if you went deep last year and you have that end, you have that many sort of games on your legs."

"You're not looking forward to more games. But, I think he understands the context of the league."

Silver says despite James' initial gripe, it was the NBA Players' Association that ended up voting in favor ... but he's totally down to collab on a common ground to make both sides as happy as possible.

"At the end of the day, the Players Association speaks for the players, and they've approved this format for next season," he added.

"So, I think we wanted to get one more season under our belt that wasn't a pandemic season, so we could really get a sense of how it works."

"But, I'm more open to tinkering with it if necessary."

Last year, we had a lot of emotions watching LeBron's Lakers going against Stephen Curry's Warriors in one of the most exciting games of the season. As usual, some will agree with this, and some won't, especially if their team faces elimination in the tourney. 

This serves as extra motivation to whoever ranks 7th-10th and indeed brings a lot of excitement to fans. As of right now, this won't be permanent, and who knows, maybe we won't see the play-in tournament in 2023. Yet, time will tell how that ends.