Lately we've seen many instances where teams that could finish 4-8 decide to game the system and throw games in order to get into their preferred matchup. For example, I could easily see the Lakers saying this year: let's deliberately lose our last few games to slide to #7 so we can face the Suns and not be #6 facing the Clippers. The Jazz sort of did that last year, iirc. The play-in tournament makes that type of strategy too risky. Now you have to play honest and do your best to avoid the play-in.