Would someone please turn off the soccer games on Adam Silver’s T.V.! The NBA and commissioner Adam Silver are going full force on the In-Season Tournament as the NBA is set to implement a Champions League-style tournament smack dab in the middle of the season.
I really can’t believe Adam Silver and the NBA league officials thought THIS was a good idea.
Despite being a single league with 30 established, non-relegation threatened teams all playing each other multiple times a season, the NBA is going full force with the implementation of the In-Season Tournament that’ll see all teams compete in a Champions League-style knockout competition in the middle of the regular season. And, if you think this is the dumbest thing you’ve ever heard, you’re absolutely right.
I really hope I’m not in the minority on this one, but I just don’t understand why Adam Silver and all of his league officers think it’s a good idea to implement a wholly unique style of mid-season tournament to European Football when said tournament not only doesn’t work in North American basketball, but the league also already has a tournament of a similar fashion: the playoffs.
How Adam Silver does not see the NBA’s 1-8 round format based on team winning percentages throughout the 82-game regular season as the American version of the 16-team elimination tournament (with a group stage as the opening round and then knockout elimination for the concurrent rounds) that the FA Cup, Champions League, FIFA World Cup, and nearly every single other domestic European-style cup competition is based on is beyond me.
If the NBA REALLY wanted to be like the Champions League or the domestic cup competitions that dominate Europe, then they’d give teams that win (aka: finish in 1st place) the Eastern Conference and Western Conference the trophy after the end of the regular season, create a new a brand-new trophy for the team that finish atop the NBA standings entirely, and have these trophies count towards career accomplishments (aka: give out rings, honors, medals, etc.).
That would create the title system in the NBA that is prevalent in every single European competition across the pond, while also not mocking the game with some stupid, valueless In-Season Tournament that no one cares about winning.
The In-Season Tournament, which is currently advertised as “all teams will participate in the group stage, which will consist of six groups total — three per conference — and chosen by a random draw based on teams’ winning percentage the previous season. Each team will play four games in its group, with the six group winners making the knockout stage, along with two wild cards who finished with the best winning percentage and not first in their groups. Knockout-stage games will be single elimination through the final,” (ESPN-Link Down Below) just sounds incredibly gimmicky.
The reason for the FA Cup, Champions League, and other domestic cup competitions existence is for the various European and domestic teams to play one another when they’d normally not be able to do so under the rules of their league participants.
As it stands today, teams in the 1st division of England (aka: the Premier League) and teams in the 2nd Division of England (aka: the Championship) and so on cannot play against one another as they aren’t in the same division, while the English teams cannot play against the other European teams as the play in different nation-centered domestic leagues.
The FA Cup and domestic cup competitions allow for teams all across England to play against one another in single-elimination, knockout games, while the Champions League allows the best European teams to play one another under the same rules (with a first round being a group stage). Since the NBA ALREADY has every team play each other every single season and they all are North American, the need for said tournaments has been (and will always be) nullified.
But I guess Adam Silver in his infinite wisdom doesn’t understand this as sometime in November through December, all NBA fans are going to be forced watching their teams play against one another in a silly, meaningless tournament that teams are probably just going to load manage their players for anyways.
Hooray.
Images Source: Featured Image:
