The NBA Season Tournament is underway.
The league will host the final four of its first-ever tournament of the season from December 7-9, Reporting by ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski. The semi-finals and the final will take place in Las Vegas. The news comes as Las Vegas prepares to host NBA Summer League games and Victor Wembanyama’s highly anticipated debut.
According to the report, stats from the tournament will count for the regular season except for those from the league game.
Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach reported on tournament details in April shortly after the announcement of the new collective bargaining agreement, which included the in-season tournament.
Teams will be split into six intra-conference pools of five (not necessarily by division).
On designated days during the first six weeks of the regular season, teams will play four group games – one against the other teams in their group (everyone plays two at home and two on the road).
The winners of each pool and two wildcard teams will advance to a single-elimination tournament (tiebreakers to determine the eight entrants, such as point differential, are still under discussion).
The semi-finals and finals of the tournament will take place at a neutral site.
Tournament champion players will each receive $500,000.
More details will be revealed Saturday at NBA Con, a premier fan event in Las Vegas that the league promotes as a kind of basketball Comic-Con that takes place alongside the Summer League action. The tournament will mimic those in European football and basketball leagues which pit the top teams against each other for a mid-season prize. It’s literally and figuratively a foreign concept to most American fans, who prioritize sports league season-ending championships as the only prizes that matter.
The WNBA holds an in-season Commissioner’s Cup competition which designates certain regular season games that count towards the Commissioner’s Cup standings. It’s the most direct American sports comparison to what the NBA will do.
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has long been a proponent of adding intrigue and revenue to a long and sometimes monotonous regular season schedule. Selling NBA fans will prove to be a tall order. There will surely be skeptics among league players as well.
But now Silver gets his wish and a chance to prove the doubters wrong with an idea that is gaining traction in America’s professional sports landscape.