@BlazerWookee said it best: Hating the l*kers is a moral imperative, not subject to conditional modifiers.
I think guaranteeing a playoff seed this early in the season is dangerous. I think it would make the product much worse for the regular season for the team that wins seeing as how they can load manage and not put in full effort the rest of the way.
Maybe you like the proposal of the IST winner get the 7th seed then - as its only a playin spot it doesn't guarantee the playoffs. I'd be fine giving the IST winner up to the 4th seed personally. I like the idea of the IST winner getting some sort of playoff benefit. There are a lot of possibilities to improve this though, here are a couple more; Change the IST groups to divisions so it builds rivalries and is something fans can remember Get rid of point differential tie breakers - it lead to bizarre running up the score scenarios Use regular season record as tie breakers Giving the prior years champ (ie Nuggets) a spot in the IST knockout round