The NBA, in an attempt to make more games matter for more teams at the end of the regular season, instituted a play-in tournament to determine the 7 and 8 seeds in both conferences this year. It’s drawn some scorn from players and other folks around the league — LeBron James, in particular, is not a fan — but an issue popping up is that people just don’t seem to totally get how the whole thing works.
The fine folks at Inside the NBA tried to remedy this by having Charles Barkley do a full breakdown of the tournament. The problem that they ran into is that Chuck (probably correctly!) deduced that the teams that end up in the 7 and 8 seeds don’t have much of a chance to go on a sustained run, so instead, he just kept calling them losers while struggling to figure out if he should use his hands or a laser pointer.
Charles Barkley breaks down the NBA play-in tournament
(via @NBAonTNT)pic.twitter.com/z23sRljQxj
— Dime (@DimeUPROXX) May 7, 2021
This ends with a hallmark of most Inside the NBA conversations about stuff: At one point, the topic changed to something completely different when Barkley asked the fellas about their takes on “cryptocoin.” Admittedly, this did a horrific job of explaining things (despite the fact that Ernie Johnson was trying his best), but at least it was good television.