Celtics, NBA Players Hilariously Unenthused By In-Season Tournament

Hey basketball fans, are you excited for the debut of the NBA’s new In-Season Tournament?

No?

Yeah, neither are the players.

If you’ve watched even a second of the early portion of the NBA season, you’d know the league has made a gigantic deal out of the debut of this new tournament. The whole shebang kicked off on this week and will culminate with a championship game on Dec. 9. The final four teams will compete at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with the winning team capturing the “NBA Cup” and winning players each potting $500,000 in prize money.

The whole idea behind it is to (obviously) drive up revenue, but it has incentivized players with the prize money and gives them something to play for early in the year. The only problem is a lot of them have no idea what’s going on.

“I’m not even going to lie. I don’t even know what’s going on,” Clippers guard Bones Hyland said, according to Joey Linn of Sports Illustrated. “I don’t know what’s going on, I don’t know how it works, I don’t know anything.”

It’s been kind of a mess so far, with the league debuting new courts for the games that have drawn mostly negative reviews. Hyland isn’t alone in having a level of confusion about the whole thing, but even those who understand it don’t really care.

“I’m being completely honest, nobody cares about (winning the tournament), it’s the big one that we care about,” Grizzlies guard Marcus Smart said prior to the season, per CBS Sports. “I have mixed feelings on it, but it’s great to be able to play more basketball and I think that’s more of it, just those more games for the fans.”

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The Celtics will play their first tournament game Friday against the Brooklyn Nets, but don’t seem too enthused with the novelty of what would normally just be a divisional game.

“I wouldn’t choose the word excited, but ready,” Jaylen Brown said, per CLNS Media. “We’ll be ready. If there’s basketball to be played, our group will be ready.”

There will be plenty of folks who do find a way to make the tournament games interesting (if you think you fall into that category, head over to NESNBets.com) but otherwise the tournament seems like kind of a dud. We’re sure feelings will change for whatever team ends up winning the thing.