Another Missed Layup From a Timid NBA
Adam Silver, what are you doing?
Why are you copying the European soccer system but forgetting to include why its such a fun romp in the first place?
The current head honcho of the NBA is fully aware that the majority of players and fans for that matter don’t care about the regular season, especially in the first couple months. It has become a running joke that the season doesn’t actually start until Christmas. Although the league has had decades to counter this problem with whether a shorter playoff, a shorter regular season, and other potential incentives/consequences, they have kicked the can down the road until they reached the wall.
Kevin Durant and LeBron James just had their first regular season matchup in FIVE YEARS the other night. Usually, its wildly improbable for two team-hopping Hall of Fame superstars to never play each other, but it’s a result of actual injuries, questionable injuries, shutting down their playing minutes for games at a time, and overly resting while preparing for the three-month grind known as the playoffs. A good number of the most popular players in the league never play beyond 60 games a season, almost a quarter of the year.
The NBA has seen their television ratings and overall popularity falter and as a result it creeps into the playoff numbers, and Silver wants to spice up the early chunk to try to maintain value of the regular season especially as television contracts loom in the distance. So, he separated the 30 teams into different groups and created this in-season tournament to determine a winner, some champion before Christmastime when the games actually heat up in importance—all while their stats contributing to the overall season’s numbers. The prizes at the end include essentially bragging rights, a new banner to hang in the arena, and of course some cash considerations for the winning participants.
One problem however, this doesn’t work if you aren’t fully committing to the potential chaos.
Imagine a basketball version of this style of tournament madness
This tournament has all the modeling and makings of soccer tournaments seen in Europe, especially the Champion’s League---but the NBA’s tournament doesn’t include any lower-level teams, doesn’t invite teams from Mexico, Puerto Rico, or even Canada for that matter. What could have been a fun romp involving NBA teams taking on other teams they otherwise would never be playing, instead its just a clutter of games with artificial value attached. There’s no chance for a “giant-killer,” no grandiose upset that could shake the sports news media, no intriguing matchups between professional leagues and different-tier players. Also definitely no potential for international bragging rights as we can’t get 3-4 countries involved under the current overly-exclusive format.
WE CAN DO SO MUCH BETTER. SO SO SOOO MUCH BETTER
Not even the G-League is invited, even though their season starts at around the same time, and currently have an even 32 teams (after the Suns finally land their G-League equivalent), which would make the group creating still very easy to craft. With just the G-League, you could have made a 62-team tournament, and maybe even include a few teams from Mexico or even craft a team of NBA free-agents banding together to take on the franchises that won’t hire them. Look at all the squads within North America that could have joined in on the anarchy. Instead, we have teams in different divisions playing each other, nothing more. Drives me insane that the NBA has looked at the globe-trotting madness of the World Baseball Classic and won’t even consider opening the door for Puerto Rican or Mexican teams to enter the tourney.
Adam Silver is smart to at least understand that we really have a problem with the regular season, but he isn’t committing quite enough to the solution.
Instead of what we’re about to witness, why not offer the chance for NBA teams to travel to different destinations to play in a multi-league, multi-tier tournament that is ripe with potential upsets, potential intrigue, and as a result can expand the NBA to certain corners that otherwise would never see Level-1 professional basketball?
With this, you can still have your 82 games to keep ownership happy while technically shortening the actual regular season by making THIS the pre-cursor, the pre-season, and a good appetizer to what eventually becomes the main course of professional basketball play.
Perhaps Silver secretly doesn’t want a superior playoff format to circumvent his, after all the NBA playoffs has seen its share of critics (the first TWO rounds should be shorter, by the way).
Maybe he doesn’t want anything overshadowing the regular season while still trying to find a way to convince players that the 80 plus games actually means something despite a whopping 20 of 30 teams being within the April playoff system.
Whatever the reason may be, basketball fans across the world deserves much better than what we’re about to get for the next few weeks. Greatness is so close, but money, ego, and maybe a refusal to truly emulate European sports is what’s preventing the NBA In-Season Tournament from becoming something truly special and energetic. Adam Silver, please, embrace the chaos, and send out more invitations.
Or, at the very least offer a guaranteed playoff spot to the winner of the tournament to really offer an intriguing reward.