The NBA Cup Is Happening!
Format
Last week, the NBA officially announced the format for the long awaited In-Season Tournament and it’s going to be AMAZING! Teams have been designated into six groups of five, with three groups in each conference. The previous year’s regular season standings were used as part of the group draw to achieve competitive balance.
Play will commence about ten days into the regular season on Friday, November 3rd and over the course of the month, all 30 teams will play traditional regular season games. Within their November schedules, teams will play their four group opponents on designated “Tournament Nights”. These games will count towards both the regular season and group play NBA Cup standings.
Group winners will be determined by record in games designated for group play. The primary tiebreaker within a group will be head-to-head results, followed by cumulative score differential, and then total points scored. Tiebreakers across groups will follow the same procedure apart from head-to-head results. The winner of each group, along with one wildcard team from each conference, will advance to the knockout rounds.
The knockout rounds feature single elimination games and begin with the two higher seeds in each conference hosting the two lower seeded teams in intraconference games. The winners of those games, advance to the NBA Cup Semifinals which will be played in Las Vegas on Thursday, December 7th. Games played during both the quarterfinals and semifinals will count toward the regular season standings, as these matchups will feature teams that would have played at least three times over the course of a traditional 82 game NBA schedule.
The winners of the semifinal games will meet in Las Vegas, on Saturday, December 9th to determine the first ever NBA Cup Champion! The championship game will result in an 83rd game, played by a representative from each conference, that will not count towards the regular season standings. This approach ensures that each team will continue to visit each NBA city at least once per season and means that one pairing of East/West teams will meet three times prior to the start of the NBA Playoffs, rather than the traditional two meetings.
As the idea of an NBA In-Season Tournament was debated over the last few years, the biggest hurdle was finding the right balance between the new competition and the regular season. The widely accepted consensus was that the NBA would have to reduce the 82 game regular season schedule to allow for the insertion of tournament games within an already packed calendar. The solution that the NBA and the NBA Players Association found instead, is nearly perfect!
Weaving the tournament into the fabric of the regular season schedule only required the addition of a single game and introduces urgency to the early part of the NBA schedule. The format, and placement within the NBA calendar, should ramp up anticipation for the start of each season and deliver more high-level competition that both fans AND players will enjoy!
Stakes
NBA players love basketball, are extremely competitive, and want to play at the highest levels. A common criticism of the In-Season Tournament has been, what are the stakes? Perhaps it is a fair question on the surface but, most of these players want to win at everything they do. Almost every team has stories of card games, board games, weightlifting challenges, or some other competition they have going on internally.
A half decade ago the Boston Celtics ping pong games became somewhat of an urban legend in the city with New England Patriots wide receiver Julian Edelman even coming through to take on Gordon Hayward! Point being, I would be much more surprised with players having an indifferent attitude towards the competition than I would be with hearing stories from across the association about how much teams want to win the inaugural NBA Cup. For anyone looking for evidence of how competitive the players are…remember the 2022 T’Wolves play-in tournament celebration?
The other aspect that has been raised around the stakes is the question of financial incentive for the players. Each player on the winning team will receive $500,000. It’s an amount that is very significant for an end of the bench player but, might not move the needle much for All-Star players making north of $40 million per season. When you compare the financial incentives to those of winning the NBA Championship though, they are not that dissimilar.
The NBA playoffs feature a pool of prize money that is awarded to each of the 16 teams that qualify based on a combination of seeding earned and how far they advance. The 2023 NBA Champions Denver Nuggets received an estimated $7.8 million from the prize pool this past season. If that money was to be split evenly amongst a 15 man roster, it would result in $520,000 being awarded to each player. The actual allocation of the NBA playoff prize money is at the team’s discretion, but no matter how you distribute it, financial incentives are not the driving force behind NBA Title teams. The desire to win the championship is!
The Larry O'Brien Trophy will remain the sport’s greatest prize, as it is presented in acknowledgement of a team earning the title of NBA Champions for a given season. A goal that organizations have pursued since 11 teams took the court for the 1946-1947 season. Traditions have to start somewhere, a fact that NBA Commissioner Adam Silver acknowledge in the face of uncertainty surrounding the new competition stating, "New traditions take time. But all throughout sports, we are seeing new innovations, and now is the time for this NBA In-Season Tournament." It will take time to build a history associated with the NBA Cup however, as we watch the competition unfold, it should not take long for everyone to see that it holds meaning.
The First NBA Cup
Looking ahead to the inaugural edition of the tournament, the scheduling is excellent! The Tournament Nights in November will all take place on Tuesdays and Fridays, creating a special event feel similar to that of an NFL Sunday, with multiple games underway at once and featured games nationally televised. The NBA also wisely slotted these nights in between NFL game nights. While the semifinals will go head-to-head with Thursday Night Football, they set up perfectly for the championship game. The NBA Cup will be awarded on a Saturday night, unopposed by football, with the College Football Conference Championship games scheduled for the week prior.
The implications of this new competition are fascinating. For the first time in the history of the NBA we will see the league’s top teams compete in single elimination games! Unlike a playoff series where significant adjustments and lineup decisions may take place game to game, coaches and players will be challenged to quickly find solutions on the fly. The introduction of neutral site games as the tournament nears its conclusion adds an interesting dynamic as well, creating the possibility of raucous crowds with split allegiances. The environments for those games should be ELECTRIC!
Additionally, once the first NBA Cup has been won, we will be faced with two new possibilities. The first is the concept of a “Double Champion”. In the early years, we won’t have a historical precedence to compare to but, we may see a team win both the NBA Cup and the NBA Championship in the same season! The second scenario would be even more captivating…the possibility that the NBA Finals could be a REMATCH of that seasons NBA Cup Finals!!!
Imagine both teams vying for the sport’s ultimate prize, with one team pursuing what figures to be an elusive double championship season, while the other team is looking to avenge a Cup Finals defeat. The potential storylines are endless…Get your popcorn ready, this is going to be fun!
Name / Names?
OK, if there is one thing I’m not exactly amped for, it’s the name or names…The trophy is being called the NBA Cup but, the official releases from the NBA still refer to the “In-Season Tournament” as well. I always thought In-Season Tournament was just a placeholder until the details were finalized.
My hope is that In-Season Tournament is just something that the league felt they needed to keep front and center in their marketing campaign for the first year. The goal in doing so would be to help educate viewers and draw attention to the fact that a new competition is being added to the calendar. After year one, it needs to go! In-Season Tournament feels about as clunky as renaming the playoffs as the After-Season Tournament. Brand the entire competition as the NBA Cup Tournament or simply the NBA Cup.
Also, the NBA Cup name probably needs to be rethought at some point as well. It’s fine but, NBA Cup Champions and NBA Champions are too similar for my liking. There are so many other options! In working through all the details of the tournament and the CBA did they just forget to name this thing? Commissioners Cup, Players Cup, Association Cup, World Cup (sorry, that one’s taken!), North American Cup, Naismith Cup…you get it.
Future
The NBA Cup will likely evolve over time. I expect to see changes made to the format over the years, just as we have seen with the NBA playoffs throughout history. Feedback from fans, players, coaches, team execs, etc. will be considered but, the initial format is very well constructed and there are three core elements that I believe will stand the test of time.
The first being group play games counting towards both the NBA Cup and the regular season standings. Aside from how well this works with the schedule, it serves the purpose of integrating the NBA Cup into the season, rather than having it exist as an entirely separate entity. NBA seasons will now see an NBA Cup Champion crowned, in addition to Eastern & Western Conference Champions, and ultimately an NBA Champion.
The second element that I believe is here to stay is the use of single elimination games in the knockout rounds. The format significantly differentiates the tournament from the playoffs, which is very important to its success.
And finally, the third element that I believe the NBA nailed is the use of a neutral site. I’m not suggesting that the NBA Cup will grow to anywhere near the level of interest of the Super Bowl but, it creates a unique opportunity to allow the NBA world to descend on a single location for a championship weekend, which should be a fantastic experience for fans.
While I expect the neutral site to remain, it will be interesting to see if the NBA Cup moves to other locations in the future. Las Vegas feels like the perfect setting to host the early years of the event but, as the NBA seems destined to expand to the city in the not-too-distant future, the event may need to be moved to guarantee a neutral site.
One possibility is that it remains in Vegas, just as the Super Bowl is always hosted in an NFL city, with the possibility of the host city’s team advancing to that stage. Once there is an NBA franchise in Las Vegas, the tournament could also go on a Super Bowl like rotation between NBA cities like Los Angeles, Miami, New York, and San Francisco. Alternatively, the tournament could move to another full-time neutral site host city, such as San Diego where Stan Kroenke is building a new 16,000 seat arena.
Lastly, one thing that cannot be ruled out, as the NBA looks to continue to grow its brand, is the idea of taking the tournament overseas to host cities in Europe such as London, Madrid, Paris, Rome, or Milan. If there is one thing we have learned about Adam Silver, it’s that he’s not afraid to explore new territory!
