For years, the NBA has been contemplating ways to make its 82-game regular season more relevant, tossing around the idea of an in-season tournament modelled on soccer’s various cup competitions.
The idea is to bring more playoff-style urgency to the regular season’s six-month grind. If the in-season tournament is a future concern, this season the league has introduced a new quirk to the schedule that has a post-season quality of its own. Enter the two-game miniseries — the same two teams playing a pair of games over a three-day span in the same city. The Raptors will play seven such miniseries this season.