The NBA In-Season Tournament details were official announced today and it’ll be implemented for the 23-24 season. Let’s break it down.
Despite confusion by an overwhelming amount of NBA fans, the concept of an NBA In-Season Tournament has been kicked around for over 5 years. Adam Silver acknowledged real discussions about an in-season tournament model in 2019. The goal would be to generate more excitement during the middle of the 82-game regular season. Both for fans that are migrating from football season to basketball season AND players who growing tired during the season. After tipping off in mid-October and settling in the first 20 or so games the All-Star break isn’t until February around the 60 game mark.
The winning team will be provided addition compensation as “motivation” but the NBA is doing its best to get players and coaches excited. Steve Kerr, Anthony Edwards, Victor Wembanyama, Trae Young, Cade Cunningham, and Pablo Bancaro announced the team groups during the ESPN Special on Saturday. With NBA personnel gathered in Las Vegas for Summer League it made a good time to get the news out.
Group play will include all 30 teams and be divided into three teams of five in the West and three teams of five in the East. Similar to divisions, but mixed up randomly for variety. Initial participation will be included as part of normal NBA scheduling. When NBA schedules are announced in August each team will only have 80 games on the schedule determined and the other two will be added in December once teams are eliminated. The full league participation games will be scheduled on Tuesdays and Fridays during November with two away and two home games for each team. So plan for big NBA schedules during those evenings in November when football isn’t on (Monday, Thursday, Saturday, and Sunday). That’s pretty cool.
Eight teams will move on to single-elimination games for the tournament. The team with the best record in each of the six groups with advance plus a wild card with the best record from the remaining teams East and from the West. The other 22 teams that didn’t advance will have two games added to the schedule so that their regular season total is back at 82. I assume each team eliminated after the first round of eight will have one more added to make the total 82 (80+1 tourney elimination game + 1 more regular season game added). Only the two teams playing in the Championship game will play an 83rd game of the season (80 regular season + winning 2 elimination tourney games + 1 Championship). So no additional games for 28 of 30 NBA squads. That should alleviate concerns for folks that are worried about increasing games. The final four will be played in Vegas on December 7th & 9th.
Is that all clear as mud? The ESPN TV special didn’t do a great job of explaining how the regular season schedule would be impacted or the turnaround time for teams to fit their additional couple games in. I assume there will be a gap in the schedule from Thanksgiving through December initially and the league will release a completed 82 game schedule possibly days ahead of time for eliminated teams to fit their couple games in while the qualifiers play out.
Will this work? Will NBA teams, players, coach, want to and try put effort into the key games and enjoy the competition? Quite frankly, maybe. I think it depends on where the team is sitting at that juncture. If there are injuries, or you have a road trip mixed in or after the tourney dates, or you lose the first couple games in group play, then perhaps the effort isn’t as focus. These are regular season games in the initial stages after all. They don’t matter unless the players effort shows that it matters. Most NBA players are competitive so I expect the cut from eight to the Championship to be competition. Single-game elimination seems to get the blood flowing. I’m not sure that the prize payout is significant enough ($500,000 per), nor the trip to Vegas to play the games, and the “Cup” trophy at first glance is unexciting. The reception from players so far seems positive and genuine. I just want to see exciting basketball. Sign me up.
