The semifinals and the final of the NBA’s first ever in-season tournament will take place on December 7 and 9 in Las Vegas, reports ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN (Twitter link).
The Dec. 9 championship game – which will represent an 83rd in-season contest for the two participants – won’t count as a regular season game, but the quarterfinals and semifinals will.
As Tim Reynolds of The Associated Press tweets, when the NBA releases its schedule for 2023/24 in a few weeks, each team will initially be scheduled to play 80 regular season games. The 22 teams that don’t make it to the knockout stage of the in-season tournament will have two games added to their schedule during the season, while the four teams that lose in the quarterfinals will each have one game added.
The final four teams won’t require additional games on their schedule, since they’ll each play at least two in the knockout stage of the tournament.
As previously reported, leading up to the knockout stage of the tournament, each of the NBA’s 30 teams will play four “group stage” games (two at home and two on the road) during the first few weeks of the regular season — these games will take place on two designated days of the week.
The NBA notes within its new Collective Bargaining Agreement that teams will be divided into three groups of five per conference (six groups in total) based on the previous year’s regular season standings.
Each group will feature one team that finished top three in the conference the year before; one that finished between fourth and sixth; one that finished between seventh and ninth; one that finished between 10th and 12th; and one that finished between 13th and 15th. Using that criteria, the groups will be determined based on random drawings.
For instance, it would be possible for one of the three Western groups this season to feature the Nuggets (last year’s No. 1 seed), Warriors (6), Lakers (7), Mavericks (11), and Spurs (15). A hypothetical Eastern group could consist of the Celtics (2), Knicks (5), Heat (7), Bulls (10), and Magic (13).
While we know the six group winners and the top two “wild card” finishers will advance to the eight-team knockout stage, the NBA still hasn’t clarified what the tiebreakers will look like. That’s an important detail, since a four-game group stage won’t give teams much room to distance themselves from one another.
This seems like it has the potential to be crazy confusing to most people but I hope it works. it’s interesting at least.
It’s already crazy confusing. The most obvious point is just ‘why’?
Bc it sound, why knock it before you see it
I don’t think anyone has come out and said “this is a great idea” to this, right? The players and the player’s union are against it, the Coaches don’t care, and fans are like “huh, this *might* be interesting” at best. Just seems like a dumb gimmick to me.
If the players and player’s union are against the in-season tournament, they had the most recent CBA to deal with it. They didn’t, so obviously there cannot be THAT much hatred toward the concept.
Big, “weird” changes like this always take time to adjust to, if one ever adjusts at all. It’s an idea too foreign to many of us to feel anything but disorientation initially. It reminds me of big UI updates that people may hate initially, but eventually grow accustomed to and end up liking. There’s just no way it happens out of the gates given the scale of change.
Do I personally think like the idea of an in-season tournament as I sit here today? No. But is it something I can confidently say I will hate? No. I have no idea if it will grow on me with time. It might. I’ll just have to see how it goes while keeping an open mind.
This is the single dumbest idea any league has ever come up with.
Agreed. If they wanted to inject new life into the mid-season, they should just have made All Star Weekend about the 3 point, dunk contest and 3-on-3 tourney with each team choosing their reps. A mid season tournament just waters down the finals.
It’s a money grab scheme.
Right up there with letting the all-star game decide home field advantage in the World Series
I was going to say exactly the same thing
Actually, it’s much worse. Letting the AS game decide homefield advantage, while fairly silly, isn’t any more silly than what had determined homefield advantage before then: the two leagues *alternated*. And going by W-L record isn’t exactly fair given the scheduling imbalances by league. Since the old method was poor and there is no obvious “good” method, might as well use it to give a hair more juice to the AS game.
This NBA move conjures something out of nothing, and is it even for any reason? That seems multiple levels worse to me.
This is the single funniest username I’ve ever seen!!
No love for the Manfred Runner in baseball? 7 inning double headers? Three batter minimum for pitchers?
I fail to see how perhaps adding a little excitement and competition to a few early season games is a negative thing let alone dumb.
This is a dumb idea. They already have a tournament and it’s called the playoffs. They’re trying to be like soccer but without teams from multiple leagues.
LOL
Didn’t need this…..
The NBA was already 1/2 step up from pro wrestling.
This is simply not a legitimate professional sports league. It’s a screwed-up, money-grabbing, freak-show.
I think the prize money is $500K-$1M per player for the winning team, right?
That’s a huge deal for a team’s rookies and end-of-bench guys who might only play 1-3 seasons in the league.
It would be a great dynamic if stars go hard in this knowing they help their own teammates and themselves get paid more.
The whole goal is to inject more competitiveness into the nba season. Pro athletes in their personal lives bet on everything to make it more interesting…this has the potential to make them care more about a few December games than they ever did before, and get casuals caring about nba basketball before April.
The league will continue to tweak it and make it better every year, just like they’ve done with the g league and summer league.
I think it would be cool if the winning team got the 31st pick in the nba draft between the first and second round. That way the whole org cares about winning it, not just the players who get a payout.
“The whole goal is to inject more competitiveness into the nba season.”
The whole goal is to inject more MONEY into the nba season.
I fixed your statement.
Competitiveness by way of money, then. If it ends up having that effect, all the better.
Just like the new CBA. Overly complicated and not necessary. How about just getting your stars to play more games, fix flopping and Seattle expansion? Nothing else needs to be changed.
The new CBA literally has changes designed to combat the first two (not that they go far enough IMO, but they never do in big money sports leagues), and Silver has already mentioned he’s waiting for the TV deal to get done before he turns his attention toward expansion. It is inevitable.
This is pointless and dumb. Nothing but a money grab for the league. Nothing about this excites me.
How many of these so called important in season tournament games will stars take off for load management?
As long as they work it into the regular season schedule (except for that one game), I have no issue with it. The one thing I would do differently is to allow the divisions to still mean something. Miami won the southeast and made it to the finals but would still be counted as a #8 seed. It should be set up by division.
This is gonna be epic! Can’t wait!
So it’s like the FA Cup in English football, but it only involves teams in the top-flight league. Which saps the whole thing of meaning. The whole point is to have David v Goliath matchups with anything-can-happen energy. No one cares if the Hornets beat the Celtics. Get G-League or College teams into the tourney, cuz if St. Mary’s beats the Hornets, then that’s something.
They’re really doing this hey? Ok then lol. Guess we’ll see how it works out.
Anything the NBA can do to kill the college game is good for them I guess. What else is happening on a Thursday and Saturday? If your not watching the NFL on Amazon then you might be looking at college action. This way it might attract the casual fan to the NBA. And to think I thought the casual fan started watching NBA on Christmas Day. Real question is this a TNT and ESPN family scheduling deal.
Now if winning a top-three pick was the prize here, I’d get it.
this is stupid.