There’s “renewed traction” in discussions between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association about a future in-season tournament, sources tell Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
An in-season tournament is a concept that has been reported for years as a possibility, but Wojnarowski’s latest report suggests the two sides are making some progress toward bringing the idea to life.
As Woj outlines, the league and the players’ union are having conversations about a structure that would include December pool play, with a quarterfinal, semifinal, and final taking place prior to Christmas. The two sides continue to discuss the possibility of a $1MM payout per player on the winning team, as Shams Charania of The Athletic reported in September.
Creating the necessary incentives to get both players and fans invested in the results of a play-in tournament has been a challenge for the NBA as it attempts to get the idea of a midseason tournament off the ground.
A $1MM-per-player prize would likely do the trick for players — especially for younger guys. Some rookies are earning less than $1MM in salary this season, so a $1MM bonus would more than double their earnings. Plus, as Bobby Marks of ESPN notes (via Twitter), 73% of the NBA’s players are earning less than the league’s average salary.
It remains to be seen what the league has up its sleeve to get fans on board, but I suspect that – regardless of what’s at stake – an in-season tournament would likely generate more interest than an average slate of regular season games in December.
Give the winning team an automatic playoff berth.
If you want to get buy-in from star players then just make the games within the tournament count towards the season seeding.
i dont get it. people really don’t seem to want this. would it really get the viewrship to offset costs?
People didn’t want the play-in either and it’s worked out pretty well.
Changes like this are always hard to gauge. You can’t ever imagine liking them as first, but it’s tough to know for sure until you’d see it with your own eyes. We are creatures of habit.
Personally, I’m not a fan of the idea myself but I’ll try to be open-minded by not automatically writing it off.
Some will go for it. I don’t know about other countries but the US loves its contrived competitions. Hold a tournament “Final Four” weekend similar to college bball with All Star game played on the Sunday inbetween the semis and the final. The pre-Final Four games could be played during the season as part of the regular schedule. TV would eat it up!
And here I thought a December tournament was a bad idea, you came up with something every worse. Quite an accomplishment I must admit.
Luke you suspecting wrongly, I much rather watch my normal RS games in December than a meaningless & pointless tournament!