Shoutout Devin Booker After He Essentially Told The Rest Of The NBA To Stop Crying About Running Up The Score For The In-Season Tournament

Rich Graessle. Getty Images.

Ever since the NBA's In-Season Tournament started, we've seen more and more players and coaches cry about the point differential angle and all this nonsense about respecting the game and blah blah blah. As I wrote in this blog after both DeRozan and Tatum complained about it

it's extremely embarrassing. It happened a few more times after the conclusion of the Group stage, especially after Crazy Joe Mazzulla intentionally fouled Andre Drummond up 32 points because the Celts needed as high a possible differential as they could get to help increase their chances of moving on. 

Now I'll admit, I am a moron. I did not go to ASU because it's the Harvard Of The West. I've just never understood why there continued to be so much crying about this from players/coaches/etc. It's pretty obvious what the difference is with the IST games and why teams have to try and run up the score. Everyone deals with the same rules, and I understand that normally games aren't played that way, but it's been made very clear that these are not your same old traditional NBA games. Maybe it's because this thing is new, but that never made any sense to me. Getting upset over someone following the rules is a bit odd.

But do you know who isn't crying about it? Devin Booker. In fact, his stance on the whole thing might be the best take I've heard from any player in the league since this whole thing started

Seriously, compare that answer to everything we've heard about that topic for the last few weeks. It's like night and day and guess what? Booker is 10000% correct. For my money, this is about as perfect an answer as a player could give. It's pretty simple, if you don't want a team to run up the score, stop them from doing it. As Booker said, there's no need to get mad about it or think it's disrespectful when every team in the league is playing under the same rules. It's good to see a player of Booker's stature within the league voice this side when everyone else couldn't seem to stop crying about it. Yeah it may feel weird based on what everyone is used to, but it's not disrespectful. 

And I get it, it can be a little weird to hear this stance from the same guy who cried about being doubled in a pick up game 4 years ago

but that doesn't mean he's wrong here. Finding a way to make players compete for a full 48 minutes should be embraced if anything. The only tweak I would maybe make to the IST is the league should find a way for everyone to play their final game on the last day/at the same time. Sort of like they do at the end of the season with tie breakers and whatnot. Other than that I thought it was a pretty solid debut.

My guess is as the years go by and the IST becomes more normal for everyone, you won't hear these type of complaints from players and coaches. I look at this as part of the growing pains of establishing a new tradition. That doesn't mean it's not soft as hell for players to complain about it, but I imagine we won't hear nearly the same level of complaints next season now that everyone has lived through it. 

So hats off to Devin Booker coming out and pretty much telling the rest of the league to stop bitching about it. I have to admit, it was pretty refreshing to hear after all the crying we've had these last few weeks.