Let's Try to Fix the NBA Cup

 I want to like the NBA Cup. I really do! In theory it is an incredible idea that not only makes the NBA more like European Soccer, but it also adds a little wrinkle into the season that wasn’t there before, and it just seems like a fun thing to be a part of. But no matter how hard I try, I cannot get there with the way the NBA has set up the tournament.

Again, I want to like it, but I have many problems with the format. The first I can’t stand is the group stage aspect of it. I hate the fact there are completely arbitrary groups created before the season just so the league has a moment to get into the news cycle at the end of the summer. The NBA already has divisions—so why not have the group stage games be divisional matchups? The incentive to win the division has gone away completely in the recent years and this would add just a small piece of those divisional matchups back to the game. If you are insisting that the group stage must be the way we go about determining who plays in the next round in Las Vegas, use the aspects of the league that are already in place so you can not only make it easy for fans to follow but give them a refresh on the history of the division they root for.

The next problem I have is using point differential as the main tie breaker. I have a deeper issue with point differential than we have time for here, but if the NBA wants a tie breaker, why not use how well the teams defend their home court? The reason why I say this is because the league wants the NBA Cup to become a big deal and incentivizing teams to have the best home court advantage  could go a long way into doing just that. Start at the grass roots to get fans involved and have them show up to the games. How the teams do this is up to each individual organization but getting fan interest back into the sport is paramount given the recent trends with tv ratings and attendance records. Making the NBA Cup an event at the arena is a no-brainer and it needs to come from a place of authenticity, not a complete gimmick. Having the home court record matter is a way to say to your fans “we need you to win these games.” That would also mean the NBA would need to schedule more home games than road games during the duration of the NBA Cup. And while we’re on the subject of the length of the duration of the tournament, four games doesn’t move the needle to generate interest for a group stage. How about we go from four games to nine games? That way you increase the sample size to just under an eighth of the season making it a bigger part of the schedule. This is America after all, we love more stuff! Even though technically it’s not more it’s just a different way of looking at the season. You may be asking, well why nine games? Nine games because that’s just over half of the division games on the NBA calendar while also being an odd number of games, duh, so we can get rid of the use of point differential as a key indicator of who advances to the quarterfinal.

The quarterfinals, semifinals, and final are fine the way they are. I do really enjoy the idea of a neutral site for the last three games the league will just need to get more creative in how it makes Las Vegas more of an event. It’s Vegas, if the Golden Knights, Usher, and Adele can do it, it shouldn’t be that hard.

The next issue I have with the NBA Cup is the horrific courts the games are played on. I understand the courts need to be different to determine the importance of these games, but they don’t need to be stuff of cartoons. I’d like just the NBA Cup logo at center court, the middle of the lane, and maybe on opposite baselines (like the NBA used to do in the Finals), but that’s it! The courts now, the wood should be used to record the world’s largest barn fire and never thought of again.

The last issue I have with the setup of the NBA Cup is the days the games are played on. Why wouldn’t once the tournament is under way, all games following be NBA Cup games. Instead, of what they do now alternating between NBA Cup and non-NBA Cup. Going in between NBA Cup games and a normal regular season game is way too confusing and jarring a switch. No one watching should go “OH YEAH, today is an NBA Cup game.” If you have to remind someone, that’s the second you lose their interest. Having the tournament be a month long between the middle of November into the middle of December be “NBA Cup Month” and lead into the Christmas Day games would help drive interest throughout the young part of the season and give the league a better chance of getting the casual basketball fan to tune in earlier than the de-facto Opening Day of Christmas.

If you want to add something more than prize money, that’s where it gets tricky, and frankly that’s where you lose me completely. When the NBA Cup finishes there’s about three quarters of the season left so adding actual playoff value to NBA Cup wouldn’t make much sense. Draft pick compensation with the new apron rules makes the entire conversation of adding addition prizes worthless. Having the fans place the value of the tournament seems to make the most sense, and hell, the league has the money, maybe bump the prize money up another $500,000.  The NBA is trying to create value out of thin air for the NBA Cup; instead of using the history of the league to introduce a new way of generating interest into the game within the United States. The league for decades hasn’t done a great job of recognizing the historical aspects of the great game. Using the NBA Cup as a conduit won’t alleviate all the damage, but it will certainly help get this generations causal fans to care a little more, and that at this point is all you can do.   

 

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