The NBA has announced the introduction of a new in-season tournament, featuring World Cup style groups and a knockout stage for the last eight teams in contention.
A European-style competition to be implemented in the league has been in the works for some time according to NBA commissioner Adam Silver who confirmed the exciting plans during a special episode of "NBA Today" from "NBA Con" in Las Vegas.
"This is a concept that has been rumbling around the league office for around 15 years," he said. "We thought what a perfect opportunity for a global league like the NBA, and it's a perfect fit for our game.
"New traditions take time. But, all throughout sports, we are seeing new innovations, and now is the time for this NBA in-season tournament." During the announcement, the league revealed six groups each consisting of five teams for the new event, which were created via a FIFA World Cup-style draw process.
Groups for the new tournament were determined according to where each team finished in their respective conferences at the end of the 2022/23 regular season. Pot one featured the top three teams, followed by teams 4-6 landing in pot 2, teams 7-9 in pot 3, teams 10-12 landing in pot 4 and lastly teams 13-15 landing in pot 5.
To complete the groups one team was picked at random from each of the pots to create six evenly-matched groups to compete against each other. The group stage will see each team play four games, two at home and two away from home and to be played on Tuesday and Friday throughout November.
The six group winners groups will advance to the quarterfinals, with the two best additional records joining via wild cards.
Quarter-final matches will be played on December 4 and 5 at the home of the higher-seeded teams and those who emerge victorious will advance to the semi-finals and final at T-Mobile Arena on December 7 and 9. Each player on the winning team will pocket $500,000, while those on the losing team will take home $200,000 each.
Players on teams who made it to the semifinal will each receive $100,000 and players on the teams who lost at the quarterfinal stage will get $50,000. The NBA's executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics Evan Wasch was key to creating the new tournament and said the league plans to minimise back-to-back matches
as part of those group games.
"The commitment we made to teams is that we would do everything in our power to avoid the group play games being the second night of back-to-backs, it will likely be impossible to avoid some of them being the first night of back-to-backs," Wasch said.
"It is probably infeasible for us to deliver a schedule where they're not the first or second night of [any] back-to-backs. So the commitment we hope to achieve at this point is to avoid second nights of back-to-backs."
