The NBA has announced the five-team groups that will used for the league’s first-ever in-season tournament, writes Tim Bontemps of ESPN. The unveiling took place Saturday during a special episode of ESPN’s “NBA Today” held at “NBA Con” in Las Vegas.
The groups were determined in a draw similar to what is used in soccer’s World Cup. There are six groups — three each from the Eastern Conference and Western Conference — and each conference was split into five pots based on last season’s standings. One team was randomly selected from each of the pots to determine the opening-round matchups.
The results are:
- Group 1: Sixers, Cavaliers, Hawks, Pacers and Pistons.
- Group 2: Bucks, Knicks, Heat, Wizards and Hornets.
- Group 3: Celtics, Nets, Raptors, Bulls and Magic.
- Group 4: Grizzlies, Suns, Lakers, Jazz and Trail Blazers.
- Group 5: Nuggets, Clippers, Pelicans, Mavericks and Rockets.
- Group 6: Kings, Warriors, Timberwolves, Thunder and Spurs.
The tournament will start with group play, which will match each team with the other four in its grouping. Those games will take place on Nov. 3, 10, 14, 17, 21, 24 and 28.
The winner of each group will advance to a knockout round, joined by the team with the best record in each conference among those who didn’t win a group. Quarterfinal games will be played Dec. 4 and 5, hosted by the higher-seeded teams. The four winners in that round will move on to T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas for the Dec. 7 semifinals and the Dec. 9 championship game.
Bontemps points out that all teams will play within their conference until the last game, which guarantees an East vs. West matchup, just like the NBA Finals.
“Everybody’s not going to buy in right away,” admitted Joe Dumars, the NBA’s executive vice president of basketball operations. “So that can’t be the goal that everybody’s going to buy in from day one. These things take time. And I think, as time goes on, I think you can build this up and people can really get into it.”
The championship trophy will be called the NBA Cup, and players will receive $500K each for winning it. Other prize money includes $200K for second place, $100K for losing in the semifinals and $50K for losing in the quarterfinals. The league opted not to provide other incentives, such as a guaranteed playoff spot, for the tournament winner.
We passed along more details on the in-season tournament right here.
Celtics has the easiest path to win their group.
Blew it by east/west division. Would be more interesting if groups had teams from east and west. Current format favors stronger teams in weaker conferences. In any case, looking forward to it.
Oh boy! Can’t wait to see which Load Management-ers sit out all the tourney games.
So don’t watch it that weekend? Try reading a book lol
I’d rather watch with the load management-ers sitting out.
Derp
This has potential to be fun and create more storylines for the rest of the season. Bring it awn!
How does this impact the 82 games regular season? Hopefully, they count these against it as the season is way too long.
If I recall correctly from a previous article, the championship game doesn’t count for the standings, but is considered the 83rd regular season game for the 2 teams involved.
All other tourney games are considered part of the regular season schedule and count in the standings.
The regular season should be reduced to 58 games. Sports seasons in general last way too long… especially the NBA.
So whichever teams get to the championship plays 1 more game per season, that doesn’t count toward the regular season.
I think your more veteran-laden teams may do some load management to secure the L.
Yawn. Not interested.
But if I did care at all, I would ask the following questions:
1- what’s the point of having divisions but then organising the teams arbitrarily for this tournament?
2- will max players not care enough about the bonuses, preferring to peace out that week (like most players do during all-star week?
3- will the tournaments be held in neutral locations that make for a level playing field, while at the same time allow the NBA to gauge the possibility of relocating or expanding to those cities (Seattle, Lost Vegas, Kansas City, Saskatoon, etc)?
If not then it’s a concept that needs to be scrapped posthaste.
*well, maybe not Saskatoon…
1. They’re not arbitrary. They’re based on last year’s standings — one top-3 team, one between 4-6, one between 7-9, etc. You can debate the merits of the approach but the goal is to try to make the groups balanced. Just doing it by division could put certain teams at a major advantage or disadvantage depending on the strength of their division.
2. We’ll see, but all of the games except the final will count toward the regular season standings, so I don’t see why these games – which give players the opportunity to earn up to $500K in extra money – would be viewed as less important than an average Nov/Dec regular season game.
3. The group-stage games will be two home + two road for each team. The higher-seeded teams will host the quarterfinals, and the semifinals and final will take place in Las Vegas.
1) The way the NBA does the postseason, there’s no reason for Divisions *AT ALL*!
For argument’s sake, let’s imagine the 5 worst teams in a Conference are all in the same Division. Is the one with the best record have a spot in the Playoffs? No.
All having Divisions does in the NBA is steal a matchup against 4 Conference opponents every year and skew actual fairness, oh and make someone keep track of a 5 year rotation for which teams those are.
2) the NBA f***ed up by NOT guaranteeing the NBA Cup winner a spot in the playoffs. If max players knew they could cement their spot in the playoffs early on in the season, they can just worry about seeding and not have to worry about even making it. Also, imagine if the Mavericks had won that tournament last season; tanking wouldn’t have saved them their pick.
3) If these games count against the schedule, it’s hard to imagine that the owners would be willing to lose the revenues from these games; unless a deal were to be worked out for the league to compensate… but it’s an interesting idea, but ultimately at the cost to the fans. Ticket prices will go up and will generally be less available.
so games that don’t count towards an NBA championship.. that take up time during the season, that seem to have no other point than selling extra tickets and TV buys… at the risk of the players health…. this makes sense to who?
So basically the “NBA Cup” is a meaningless trophy… will they have an NBA Cup MVP as well?
People said the same thing about the ASG. The players, however, get very competitive in the fourth quarter. Add money to the equation and you know they’ll want to win it for each other. The minimum salary guys will for sure be motivated.
Hope there are good college basketball matchups during those dates. Why not do this midseason and scrap the”All Star Weekend”. That weekend is a joke anyway.
I think you’re on to something, but just not quite right. Move the NBA Cup final to the Friday (Feb 16) before the All-Star Game (Feb 18), to be played in the same arena as the ASG, make it part of the festivities. 2 days before that, hold the semifinals in Vegas (Feb 14). The quarter finals would be played on Feb 12th in their regularly scheduled venues. The last “normal” regular season game would be played Feb 10th, the Saturday before All-Star Weekend, and the first regular season game after would be the Tuesday following the ASG.
This would line up perfectly to attempt to take the spotlight left in sports after the Superbowl ends. But that’s all meaningless without a guaranteed playoff spot on the line.
First off, I’m a LP subscriber, so I would be watching games anyway. It doesn’t heighten my interest at all for a phony trophy, but anytime a 14th or 15th player can make additional money, I’m all for it. Still, the biggest loser is the NBPA, if I recall correctly, the first offer reported was 1 million to the winning team.
Was that total or per player? This is 500k per player. The only question is if that means the active 12-man roster or the injury reserve 3 and 2-way contracts as well?
WNBA gonna love this.
Wake me up when playoffs start, did not watch one regular season game last year, main reason I watched some playoffs last year was Denver was in it.’
If don’t watch any regular season games and only watch the playoffs to see one team, why are you reading stuff and posting messages here given that you obviously don’t really like basketball?
Not watching the NBA does not align with not liking basketball, I love the college game, just not the run and gun NBA, I find it boring. Aperson can watch the last 5 minutes and not miss a thing. Also, do not like LeBron and the NBA licking China’s boots.
Seems silly and convoluted. One more game for the bloated coffers of Vegas and ESPN, one more opportunity to wreck a knee or a finger, and since it won’t affect post-season seeding, a game that has even less appeal than a typical regular-season game to serious fans.
They have to play those games anyway, except the two that go to championship play one extra game. I hardly think one extra game for two teams will make that much of a difference.
I will admit, I don’t follow the NBA that much, but who the hell gave Joe Dumars another job after him completely destroying the Pistons?
The NBA has lost 30% of it’s audience since A. silver took over, but sure let’s keep making up this dumb nonsense