Imagining An NBA Midseason Tournament

Whoa boy! An NBA midseason tournament in Las Vegas? Can I buy my ticket now?!

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is considering the idea of a midseason tournament in Sin City, similar to those held in Europe for soccer. This would not be a replacement for the All-Star game, but an addition to the NBA season. The midseason tournament would give teams another “championship” to play for, and would add a different dimension to the best-of-seven playoffs series.

The Business End

First off, let’s get this out of the way: The NBA would most certainly have to cut the number of regular season games in order to host this tournament. Second, the midseason tournament would likely be sold as a separate television property, which is important to note considering the NBA’s television rights are up for negotiation at the end of the next season.

The NBA currently has contracts with ESPN and Turner. While those two companies are likely to re-up at a significant premium, the NBA is interested in adding a third television partner to the mix. Might Fox Sports 1 or NBC be interested in bidding on a week-long March Madness-style NBA tournament? One would certainly have to believe so. But that’s the business end, which is to say it’s important but not the most exciting thing about this proposal.

WE MAY GET MARCH MADNESS IN THE NBA!!!!

The Format

Can you imagine a game for all the marbles between Kevin Durant‘s Thunder and LeBron James‘ Cavaliers (still weird to type again)?! The ratings for that game would be through the roof, especially if you hold the tournament right after the Super Bowl, when the NFL goes into hibernation. How about Kobe Bryant, who is unlikely to win another championship before he retires, getting one last crack at carrying a team to a title? The storylines would assuredly write themselves.

More from Los Angeles Lakers

• Lakers: 5 Players to Target Through Trades to make another championship run
• Lakers Rumors: Los Angeles Clippers interested in Rajon Rondo
• Lakers Rumors: Jason Kidd no longer being considered for Pelicans job
• Lakers Rumors: Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Rajon Rondo expected to opt out
• Los Angeles Lakers are finally the 2020 NBA Champions

But how would this tournament work? The NBA has yet to announce any sort of formal plan. At this point it’s just an idea on the table that Silver will explore. However, as soon as I heard this plan I wanted to know how it would look. Instead of waiting around, I got to dreaming up my own plan for the NBA Midseason Tournament:

After watching the World Cup in person this summer, I can attest that its system is fantastic. The idea of holding an NBA tournament with a group stage followed by a single-elimination 16-team tournament would be amazing. At minimum, teams would play three games in round robin fashion. The two finalists would play seven. It’s certainly not asking a lot of the players.

However, the NBA currently only has 30 teams. In order to make the numbers work, we would need to add two more squads from somewhere. Here’s my proposal: Let’s bring in the two teams that make it to the Euroleague Finals. For example, this year the finals of the Euroleague featured David Blatt’s Maccabi Tel Aviv and Nikola Mirotic’s Real Madrid. The Euroleague Final is actually a final four tournament, much like the NCAA edition. So European teams would not only be competing for the right to make it to their championship game, but they would also be competing to enter the NBA Midseason Tournament in Las Vegas.

How much fun would it be to have the two best European basketball teams coming over to Las Vegas to compete against the NBA? Scouts would get a good look at some of the top talent in Europe, the NBA would get fantastic exposure overseas, and the European players would get to strut their stuff in front of NBA executives. It seems like a win-win-win-win.

The Draw

Ok, so now that we have all of our competitors, how would we decide the groups? Well, FIFA does it in a pseudo corrupt kind of way, which shouldn’t come as a surprise. However, for our purposes it should serve as a good base. Here is how it is done:

"In preparation for the final draw, the 32 participating teams were organized into four pots based on seedings and geographic regions. It was announced in October 2013 that the eight seeded teams to feature in Pot 1 would consist of the host nation Brazil and the seven highest-ranked teams as of that month’s FIFA World Rankings. Following a meeting of the competition’s organizing committee on 3 December, the composition of the other three pots was announced:The draw procedure was as follows:One European team was first randomly drawn from Pot 4 and placed into Pot 2, in order to create four even pots of eight teams (in the draw Italy was drawn out).The draw then proceeded with the drawing of the other seven seeded teams from Pot 1 into Groups B–H, with Brazil having been predetermined to be in Group A.To maximize geographic separation, an ancillary pot (“Pot X”) was created during the draw into which the four seeded South American teams (from Pot 1) were placed. One of these four teams was then drawn out (in the draw Uruguay was drawn out).The sole European team from Pot 2 was then automatically placed into the group of the South American team that was drawn from “Pot X” (Italy was therefore placed into Uruguay’s group); This process prevented three European teams being grouped together.All remaining teams were then drawn sequentially from the pots (i.e. Pots 2, 3, then 4) into the groups in alphabetical order (i.e. Group A, then Group B, etc.). During the drawing of Pot 2, groups could be skipped over as the two South American teams in Pot 2 were not permitted to be drawn into the (remaining three) groups headed by South American seeds.The positions within the eight groups were then drawn for the non-seeded teams, in order to determine the order of the fixtures within each group. The eight seeded teams were automatically designated the position of Team 1 within their group (e.g. Brazil would be A1)."

Ok, so the NBA’s previous season will determine the top eight teams in the tournament. If you reached the 2nd round of the NBA playoffs the prior year, you will be the top seed in your group. The top eight seeds for a tournament in 2015 would be the Spurs, Heat, Thunder, Pacers, Clippers, Wizards, Blazers, and Nets.

Now for the tricky part. We need to create 3 different “pots” of 8 teams each in order to determine the other three teams in each group. The first pot is already set, with our second round playoff teams being ranked by how far they went in the playoffs. Pot 2 will consist of the playoff teams who were knocked out in the first round of the NBA playoffs. Pot 3 and Pot 4 will consist of the NBA lottery teams and the two Euroleague finalists. They will be split up into Pots 3 and 4 by random selection, which means the NBA gets to play the ping pong game once again.

Using a randomizer, I’ve done a mock draw of Pots 3 and 4. Here are all the of the Pots:

Pot 1: Spurs, Heat, Thunder, Pacers, Clippers, Wizards, Blazers, and Nets

Pot 2: Hawks, Bulls, Raptors, Hornets, Mavericks, Rockets, Warriors, Grizzlies

Pot 3: Suns, Pelicans, 76ers, Timberwolves, Kings, Magic, Pistons, Lakers

Pot 4: Nuggets, Knicks, Real Madrid, Celtics, Bucks, Maccabi Tel Aviv, Jazz, Cavaliers

Now for the fun part. Let’s draw the teams in 8 groups, which will create our bracket.

Group A – Spurs, Raptors, Pelicans, Real Madrid

Group B – Heat, Rockets, Suns, Knicks

Group C – Pacers, Mavericks, 76ers, Jazz

Group D – Thunder, Warriors, Pistons, Cavs (GROUP OF DEATH)

Group E – Clippers, Bulls, Kings, Maccabi Tel Aviv

Group F – Wizards, Hawks, Lakers, Nuggets

Group G – Blazers, Hornets, Magic, Celtics

Group H – Nets, Grizzlies, Timberwolves, Bucks 

Our group stage will work a lot like the World Cup. Each team will play their group in a round robin style tournament. The top two teams in each round will advance to the next round, with the tiebreaker being total points during the tournament. Yes, that means that running up the score is important. Look, this is a midseason tournament, let’s turn the heat up a little bit.

Based on my projections of who will advance to the Round of 16, and their positions in the group, this is what a potential Round of 16 bracket would look like:

ARTWORK!

I don’t know about you, but the prospect of a single elimination tournament featuring these matchups is pretty enticing. Especially when you consider that all of the NBA teams will be in Las Vegas at the same time. I’m booking my ticket tomorrow!

The Stakes

The real question is how do you ensure that the players are competing and not just getting a break from the long grind of the regular season? It’s kind of hard to imagine a coach like Gregg Popovich playing Tim Duncan and Tony Parker significant minutes in a tournament that does nothing for their ultimate goal of winning the NBA Finals?

I think it would take time for the NBA Midseason Tournament to acquire esteem, unlike other tournaments like this in Europe such as the FA Cup. However, I believe over time it would certainly become an integral part of the NBA landscape. Moreover, if the NBA acquired a sponsoring partner, such as KIA or Sprite, to sponsor the event in a big way and provide a legitimate cash incentive to the players, I think they’d listen. Imagine if Kia put up a $20M reward for the winning team. You don’t think NBA players would be excited to compete for the chance to win $1.7M a piece, for 7 games of work? In Las Vegas?

A Bill Simmons Alternative

So, would the NBA players and coaches be exciting for a midseason tournament? Or would a postseason tournament to decide the 7th and 8th seed in each conference be more appealing? Bill Simmons, Editor in Chief of Grantland, has proposed an NBA tournament that would occur at the end of the season to determine the last four playoff spots. Every lottery team, plus the two seventh seeds and two eighth seeds, would compete in a double elimination tournament to decide the last seed in each conference. It’s named the “Entertaining As Hell” Tournament.

"Shorten the regular season by four games, guarantee the top six seeds in each conference, then have a double-elimination tourney for the seventh and eighth seeds between the remaining 15 teams. I suggest this for five reasons. First, it would be entertaining as hell. In fact, that’s what we’ll call it: the Entertaining-as-Hell Tournament. Second, I’m pretty sure we could get it sponsored. Third, the top 12 teams get a reward: two weeks of rest while the tournament plays out. Fourth, a Cinderella squad could pull off some upsets, grab an eighth seed and win fans along the way. And fifth, with the Entertaining-as-Hell Tournament giving everyone a chance, no team could tank down the stretch without insulting paying customers beyond repair. That’s the lamest thing about tanking: not that it’s morally unsound, but that fans pay full price to see a depleted group of losers with dubious intentions. At a recent Bobcats-Celtics game, my father (a 34-year season ticket-holder) watched Boston toss away a double-digit lead while Pierce and Jefferson watched from the bench. To his right, a fan screamed at Doc Rivers, “You’re doing the right thing!” To his left, another fan screamed that the collapse was “an absolute disgrace!” And as my father told me later, the disturbing thing was that both guys were right."

As of now the concept remains in the infancy stage, but I would be excited for either tournament. The NBA is being bold in trying to add interest to the game. I, for one, am extremely interested in these ideas and would love to see one of them come to fruition. Come on Adam! Bring us a tournament!