How to Transform the NBA into a Basketball-esque Premier League
So Adam Silver discussed changing the regular season to add more excitement by February, since nowadays most of the teams already playoff-bound just go through the motions and rest their players and toss away pointless games to prep for a postseason that is notoriously extremely lengthy. I admire Adam Silver looking overseas to see models of regular seasons that consistently generate buzz. He even recommended a midseason tournament with a pending name of Stern Cup. This way any team with limited playoff aspirations can still have a shot at winning a title of some sort earlier in the season.
I like the idea for changing it up, but I’m not sold on multiple tournaments as I am interested in the multiple-tier system that we see in European soccer, especially in the United Kingdom corner. I personally believe that in order to kill the tanking, kill the unnecessary resting, kill the concept of tossing entire seasons and just wait for a heavy free agency with lots of stars, we invent a system that allows only half the NBA a shot at the championship and guarantees more quality matchups for the fans to see and for the better teams to engage themselves in.
Creating a lower-tier division forces lower teams to step their game up quicker to avoid being in an economically unfavorable schedule. The two-tier system also rewards teams that actually put forth the effort with draft picks, as opposed to flopping franchises like the Knicks, which have been irrelevant since Linsanity. So, more competition, more tournaments, more late-season drama, better quality basketball, what’s not to love? And yes, I’ve had an idea similar to this before, but this one will draw deeper into the Euro soccer format.
Let’s take the regular season standings from the 2017-2018 season in order for me to display the picture of my multi-tier system.
The NBA has 30 teams, and the top 15 teams will have a chance to compete for the championship throughout the season similar to the Premier League—-divisions will be completely eliminated. The rest of the NBA would be in the bottom tier, similar to the EFL. Unlike the Premier/EFL split however, everyone will play everyone at least once. The catch is, you’ll play many more games in your tier as opposed to the other one. So if you are on the bottom tier, you’ll be playing bottom-feeders more often, which is punishment essentially for being in such a predicament. So using the example from the 2017-2018 standings:
Golden State Warriors Schedule:
14 Top Tier-Opponents x 3 Games Each = 42 Games
15 Lower-Tier Opponents x 2 Games Each = 30 Games
Orlando Magic Schedule
15 Top-Tier Opponents x 2 Games Each = 30 Games
14 Lower-Tier Opponents x 3 Games Each = 42 Games
72 games total, which is a bit less than the 82 currently happening in the NBA. So of course one can argue what’s the point of a lower-tier team even participating in the season?
Well, you’ll have a chance to promote yourself to the Championship League with a good record and with a good standing in the season-ending Silver Cup. My idea for the delegation/promotion system is that the worst two records from the top-tier go down, and the two best records from the second-tier go up—–unless the results from the Silver Cup creates something different.
There will be two tournaments in the NBA Playoff season: one to determine the actual champion, and one to determine who locks in an automatic Championship League appearance next season as well as the top two picks of the upcoming draft with a Silver Cup win.
The Silver Cup involves the five teams that didn’t make the NBA Playoffs on the top-tier, and the top 5 records from the second-tier group. So say you are the Cleveland Cavaliers and you had lost LeBron James to the Los Angeles Lakers and struggle mightily in the season, qualifying for a demotion; your chance to remain in the Championship League for another year is by winning the Silver Cup. If you survive the bracket, you not only get to stay, but you’ll also win draft picks to improve your future. The Silver Cup would also be held in the same city that hosts the All-Star Game. This way if you are looking for packaged March Madness-like postseason NBA, you can plan in advance.
Not only would the Silver Cup win guarantee you a top-tier spot, but you’ll also be rewarded with the top 2 draft picks, with the runner-up earning the third pick and fourth place getting the fourth pick. So even if you don’t win it all, by the end of the season you can still feel like a winner and a team on the rise with notable improvement, a promotion, and maybe even a Silver Cup win.
The Silver Cup gives 10 failed teams a chance at a great future, which is something the current playoff/draft format doesn’t really deliver on.
Then we have the actual NBA Playoffs, the one that will determine the actual champion. The top 10 teams of the Championship League will compete, and of course are guaranteed to stay in the top-tier bracket for next season. The top two seeds get to rest for multiple rounds while the remaining eight duke it out. The last two standing will compete in the semifinals against the first and second seed and then we reach the NBA Finals. So even though we dipped from 16 teams to 10 teams for the title, technically we’ll have 20 teams in a playoff bracket of some sort.
Why should the Boston Celtics waste their time by playing four games against the hapless New York Knicks when they can play more games against the Warriors, against the Spurs, and even against the Rockets? Why should we reward the Phoenix Suns with four games against the Blazers when they deserve to be playing more against the likes of the Magic and the Bulls? This system creates stronger matchups, stronger competitions, more potential rivalries with multiple meetings among heavyweights in regular season AND potentially in the playoffs as well.
If a franchise like the Orlando Magic wants to be on network television more often and get more buzz on ESPN, then they have to earn their way to the top-tier in order to match up more often with these behemoths in regular and postseason. My system guarantees more epic games, and guarantees more desperation as well as more playoff atmospheres and less tanking.
Imagine the possibilities. Imagine the Golden State Warriors facing the Lakers in the final game of the regular season and having the chance to keep them delegated to the lower-tier with a victory. Imagine two teams with similar records in the lower-tier battling for the final spot to compete in the Silver Cup. Imagine an Oklahoma City Thunder having to go through the bracket to enter the Silver Cup finals against a Brooklyn Nets team trying to collect some draft picks on their way to the Championship League. The possibilities for drama are endless, especially with two-thirds of the NBA having access to some sort of postseason.
I like Adam Silver’s acceptance of the fact that the NBA needs some changing in the All-Star game and the rather overlong regular season followed by an extremely lengthy playoffs. Under my format, the season gets shorter, but each game will be stronger, and with multiple tournaments and multiple divisions separating the good from the bad teams, the overall product will improve dramatically. European soccer arguably has the strongest and most cohesive competitive format in the planet, and one that guarantees strong rivalries and drama from the first game to the very last.
Copying Euro Soccer would be a great improvement in the NBA, especially in a superstar-centric league with many superteams and many teams employing the tank system. Adam Silver, make it happen, make the NBA a little more European.
And yes, I also have copied Premier League concepts to MLB regular season proposals…..