Like NBA players, the league’s coaches will benefit financially from advancing in the league’s new in-season tournament, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski.
According to Wojnarowski, the head coach of the team that wins the in-season tournament will be awarded a $500K bonus, which is equivalent to the amount that each of the players on the winning team will earn.
Head coaches, like players, will also earn bonuses if they’re a tournament quarterfinalist ($50K), semifinalist ($100K), or runner-up ($200K), per Wojnarowski.
The assistant coaches on the final eight teams will share a prize pool that will be worth 75% of the head coach’s bonus, Wojnarowski adds. If I’m understanding Woj’s wording correctly, that means the assistants on the in-season tournament champion would divvy up $375K in bonus money.
The in-season tournament prize money for players was collectively bargained between the NBA and NBPA as part of the league’s newest CBA, but bonuses for coaches weren’t part of that agreement. According to Wojnarowski, a coaching leadership group met with commissioner Adam Silver in September to discuss the possibility of adding financial incentives for coaches, and the two sides ultimately agreed on this bonus structure.
Friday is the first day of group play for the first in-season tournament in NBA history. As the event’s schedule shows, 14 teams will compete in round robin games today, with Knicks vs. Bucks, Mavericks vs. Nuggets, and Warriors vs. Thunder among the marquee matchups.
Oh how exciting.
I’m looking forward to it. I more or less stopped watching NFL, so this makes the NBA season during this period more exciting. Even from a pure NBA perspective, it makes these early season match-ups more interesting as they now not only count toward seeding in the distant future, but also an event that is pretty much right around the corner.
Heck yeah get that paper!
Should be more than 500k. The NBA is so broke