the mid-season tournament is basically the same as the various secondary cups, etc in European soccer which seem to do OK. I mean, if you’re a fan of a pretty standard 6-8 seed team - lets say the Pacers, just for example - the opportunity to get hot for a few games and get to win a little piece of hardware is probably interesting.
1 Like
But teams only play these tournaments early in the year, they would never play them in the middle of the conference schedule. Why a team would try/care in the middle of a season, especially if they were a contender, doesn’t make any sense to me.
There would probably be financial incentives for the players. The games would get more attention than your average regular season game so that’s generally financially good for the league when it comes to TV money/attendance.
You could also factor it into post-season seeding and home field advantage, I guess.
Since there’s talk of reseeding across conferences as well, one way could be to have two 15-team tournaments, east and west, with the winner getting an automatic playoffs bid. If that team comes from outside the top 8 best records, the 8th worst record could get bumped out. It’s not as if you’re really killing competitive balance there – just creating a narrative in which shit teams might get worked up and it could be at least not part of the ghastly regular-season grind for fans of lottery teams.
Just spitballing. I’m all for ways to make the regular season matter more than it does now. Not that it would inspire me to allocate scarce viewing time away from college ball, but still. Maybe just sort of creating an NBA week in early February would be good.
2 Likes
Having a mid-season tournament like soccer leagues doesn’t quite translate the same way since in soccer leagues there are no playoffs… So the mid-season tournament fulfills a different itch. For the NBA it would just be a crappier playoffs.
IMO, the way to “fix” the NBA is to get rid of total salary restrictions on Max contracts. NBA team construction / parity looks a lot different if star players were allowed to get contracts commensurate with their on-court worth. Lebron would literally be offered contracts that take up the entire cap.
3 Likes
Not sure how serious you’re being, but while Simmons initially broke through as a “voice of the fan” type, he’s actually extremely well-connected at this point. I mean, he’s been on TV as part of a major network studio team…that itself means you’re not “just a fan” any more.
And on this particular topic, he’s been touting the idea for years, during which I personally thought it was crazy talk. But lo and behold…
1 Like
There are plenty of things to hate about Simmons, but his opinion definitely matters when it comes to the NBA. When I first heard him talk about a mid-season tournament it sounded profoundly stupid. It still seems like a solution in search of a problem to me.
3 Likes
In European pro hoop you have some of the same kind of thinking–teams travel and play teams in other leagues, some finals are set up with champions of different leagues, etc. We are kind of stuck on everything culminating in one declared victor here in the U.S. and the structure, especially in football, may devalue other games, the sportsmanship and athleticism that accompanies. I’m not sure that a mid-season NBA tournament quite gets you away from that, though, not in the way that out-of-conference stuff does at the beginning of a season or college tourneys do. In Euro soccer one team moves into an upper division and one drops down every year, which helps spark interest, too. Would NBA teams always win if they went to Spain or France and played the best teams, or played All-Star teams? Would losses harm the brand? Inquiring minds want to know.
1 Like
Agree that the season is crazy-long, and with injuries piling up this is probably going to be addressed soon. Personally I don’t get what holds the whole thing up–lots of corporate seat buys? TV deals? Pretty much everyone agrees it’s too darned long. Doesn’t make me “hate” it, though. I just tend to tune in mostly at season’s end–when I do I marvel at how great the athletes are, though.
I think TV money is what holds most of it up.
1 Like
So what happens if you’re eliminated in the midseason tournament? Are you ineligible for the playoffs?
Not the big TV money - ESPN and TNT wouldn’t care. It’s the local sports deals that would get hurt.
I’m not objecting to Simmons ideas on this idea of how to change to NBA season, my joke was moreso a critic of Simmons takes on teams and players. In my experience listening to him(which would probably be described as not that much because I got sick of what I perceived to be his bias) it seemed like all of his takes were colored by his Boston fandom to a comical degree. So yeah, he has a platform and I will admit that I enjoy some of the Ringer stuff, I don’t think his specific pod is anymore than just his fan opinion when it comes to team and player evaluation.
I think he’s good on broad themes and trends throughout the league. But when it comes to what is actually happening on the basketball court, he’s garbage.
Bill Simmons is amazing at finding talent and letting it thrive. He’s not all that great at writing or podcasting about sports or movies, other than big picture things. He’s be a good guy to run into at the bar and shoot the shit with for an hour or two. But I’m not going to take his opinion seriously when it comes to what’s happening on the court/field/screen.
He used to be extraordinarily good at observing players behavior on the court. Nobody on the planet could have written 800 words more dense with observed detail than he could on the topic of Antoine Walker during any given timeout.
Has he been that good at finding talent post-Grantland? I wonder if we’d still consider him good at that were it not for Zach Lowe.
I still think that, had someone beaten some ego out of him earlier, that he could have become an incredible writer. Those early years of Page 2 were so electric. You could encapsulate his career with the Rogers Simmons/antichrist piece, the reaction to the first Pats SB, and a doctored clip of him uttering the word ``editor?!?!?!?!" over and over again like the famous AI “Ppractice?!?!?!” press conference. I really wish he would have been interested in writing as a craft, but he wasn’t.
Of course…I guess I listen with that filter on.
It’s kind of undeniable that he’s extremely well-connected and “in the know” of a lot that goes on, and he does drop nuggets. Or at least I barely listen to his podcasts and still come away with things that he ends up being ahead of the curve on (this tournament being one of them).
At least Kevin Love is trying
1 Like
Despite Beilein later calling that effort “the Aunt Beatrice”, the players should still realize why all the coaches were 
in film session the next day.
Rumor is that teams are asking the Cavs to include a 1st round pick to take on Love’s contract.
I mean, I doubt anyone is going to jump at the chance to pay him $90 million over 3 years starting next year. Amazing that the Cavs thought (maybe still think?) that contract is an asset. All these guys who put up numbers that never won a single game without Lebron are finally getting found out, a little bit (yes, this is a shot at Irving).
1 Like