The NBA’s new commissioner, Adam Silver, is looking to make his mark on the league. The latest report around the league states that Commissioner Silver is going to consider adding a mid-season tournament, likely taking place around the time of the all-star break.
Silver said the league is considering the idea of a midseason tournament, similar to soccer. Interesting. #nba
— gary washburn (@GwashburnGlobe) July 16, 2014
The Mid-Season Tournament would take place in Las Vegas, and would likely last a week or so. However, the question is, what would this Mid-Season Tournament mean to the NBA season? The tournament would involve all 30-NBA teams and I heard that they would play for a trophy. I would hate to break this the news to the League, but the contending teams aren’t risking their best players for a trophy that wouldn’t mean a whole lot if they won it.
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What would change during the NBA Season?
If the NBA actually did a Mid-Season Tournament they would have to take something out or expand the season. Expanding the season seems like a much better plan than eliminating the All-Star game. I believe that, a scenario could take place where less regular season games are played. Possibly taking the season down to only 75 games, rather than the 82 games. Then additionally to cutting the schedule down by 7 games, they could give players an extra couple days during All-Star weekend.
How do they set up the Tournament?
Obviously this isn’t the NBA Playoffs so this will be a single elimination Tournament. Meaning 5-rounds of one game series in order to acquire the championship. The top-2 seeds would receive the byes and the seeding would be based off your league standings at the time of the Tournament. The one game series would give us the March Madness experience we love so much in the college game. Any team could win a one game series against anyone in the NBA.
What is the prize?
I am not buying playing for a trophy. Sorry, that is what the NBA Finals is for. There is only one trophy and the players are awarded rings. What would winning a Mid-Season Tournament do to a players legacy? Not much, meaning you have to bring more to the table. In order to make this competitive, you have to offer some sort of prize that benefits the players too or they will think this is just all for fun. So I have came up with a couple scenarios that would make the top contending teams play at least a decent starting lineup. For instance in this tournament, the Spurs come to mind as a team that would rest their starters and see how far they go. Which could be fun because you would get to see deeper into NBA rosters, and would get to see closer games. However, if the fans are going to pay money to watch NBA players play; then they want to see LeBron James, Kobe Bryant, Paul George, Carmelo Anthony and Tim Duncan. They don’t want to see the lower level NBA players and I know that from simply looking at the NBA Summer League ratings.
So what is the perfect prize? Here are a few that I have heard: (Parentheses is where I heard it from)
– Add an extra $5 million dollars to the cap to the winning team (Bill Simmons, ESPN/Grantland)
– Give the winning team an automatic playoff bid
– Give the players bonuses; Winning players get a $500K bonus, Runner-up players get a $250K bonus (Bill Simmons, ESPN/Grantland)
– Winning team gets to steal a player from any team in the league. You wouldn’t get the superstar but more like role players. Like allow each team to list 8 players as “untouchable” and then the winning team gets to take anyone they want from the remaining, if they can afford the salary.
-Winning team wins any tiebreakers. So if they are tied for the 1st seed with another team, the team that won the Mid-Season Tournament gets 1st seed.
– Winner of the Mid-Season Tournament gets to host all the NBA Finals games, if they get there.
Problems?
Of course you can make any of the combination of those prizes and make them the prize for the Mid-Season Tournament. I know that people with have problems with my suggestions for the prizes and that’s fine. It is not easy to come up with these ideas, and I want to hear what you guys think.
So what are your ideas for the Mid-Season Tournament? And what would you give the winning team?