The begins Tuesday, and it looks like Adam Silver’s dream of creating early-season video games have extra at stake is right here to remain.
The Los Angeles Lakers took house the inaugural in-season match title in Las Vegas final yr, beating the Indiana Pacers within the remaining. The New Orleans Pelicans and Milwaukee Bucks additionally earned a visit to Vegas for the semifinals.
The NBA will proceed to tweak numerous components of the occasion, and after consulting with the individuals, the league feels it has give you an much more efficient approach of implementing this new staple.
Evan Wasch, NBA government vp of NBA basketball technique and analytics, spoke with Yahoo Sports activities just lately concerning the NBA Cup. In Yr 1, he mentioned, the scores for group play have been nearer than the typical NBA recreation, TV scores have been 18% increased than regular-season video games, attendance was increased as evidenced by final November breaking league information, and social media engagement was “off the charts” — along with the Lakers’ NBA cup win being viewed by nearly 5 million people, a number that isn’t typically reached until the league’s Christmas Day matchups.
Games for group play will still be held Tuesdays and Fridays, and there will still be separate standings until group play is decided. The tournament will conclude in mid-December with the semifinals and a final taking place in Las Vegas.
Here’s what you need to know for Year 2 of the NBA Cup.
Group Play: Nov. 12-Dec. 3 (Tuesdays and Fridays)
Quarterfinals: Dec. 10, 11
Semifinals: Dec. 14
Championship: Dec. 17
For most viewers, the courts were eyesores, the bright colors being such a stark difference to the usual hardwood and center-court logo design everyone is used to. The court designs of the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz stood out in that regard last year, among others.
But the designs did accomplish the goal of drawing attention to the night and letting fans know that it was an NBA Cup game. It didn’t always play well on television, though, an expected consequence. In one instance with the Dallas Mavericks, the court wasn’t even functional for tournament play, due to a manufacturing defect.
Like everything else in this endeavor, alterations were coming.
“I won’t say shock value, but the differentiation of those courts, I think, is particularly important in Year 1, not just from a fan perspective, but we even heard from players,” Wasch said. “What we heard from players after the tournament was some of them maybe even forgot that something was a tournament game. But the minute they came out of the tunnel and saw that court, they immediately paused and said, ‘Oh, this is different. Something different is going on.’ And I think the most surprising part was how much the courts translated to the feeling of something big taking place.”
In general, the floors will return, even if some of the courts will look a bit more muted.
“Every team with their background, their watermark unique to their city or their traditional court,” Wasch said. “In a case like Boston with parquet, we just thought that allowed for a little more team branding to be layered on top of what otherwise was a league initiative last year.”
The league worked with the teams and with artist Victor Solomon to strike a balance between shock value and sensibility.
The formula hasn’t changed for group play. All 30 teams were randomly drawn into groups of five based on last season’s regular-season records, creating three divisions in each conference. Each team will play four group-play games, one against each opponent in its group, two at home and two on the road.
“So in each conference, we take the top three teams, we put them in a pot, the fourth through six, they’re in a pot, seven through nine, etc. And then to create the groups, you pull one team out of each pot,” Wasch said.
East Group A
New York Knicks
Orlando Magic
Philadelphia 76ers
Brooklyn Nets
Charlotte Hornets
East Group B
Milwaukee Bucks
Indiana Pacers
Miami Heat
Toronto Raptors
Detroit Pistons
East Group C
Boston Celtics
Cleveland Cavaliers
Chicago Bulls
Atlanta Hawks
Washington Wizards
West Group A
Minnesota Timberwolves
LA Clippers
Sacramento Kings
Houston Rockets
Portland Trail Blazers
West Group B
Oklahoma City Thunder
Phoenix Suns
Los Angeles Lakers
Utah Jazz
San Antonio Spurs
West Group C
Denver Nuggets
Dallas Mavericks
New Orleans Pelicans
Golden State Warriors
Memphis Grizzlies
The league considered making it identical to the actual NBA divisions, but decided against that because of divisional strength. Take the Northwest division — there are three title contenders in Oklahoma City, Denver and Minnesota. That would be disproportionate to, say, the Southwest division, which includes Memphis, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and New Orleans.
“And so what you get is, each year you’re going to get different groupings for the group stage of the tournament,” Wasch said. “We talked about, should we just use divisions? Because divisions are five teams, but then you get the same teams playing each year in the group. And so we thought spreading out those top teams would lead to sort of more competitive outcomes and also more storylines.”
One general manager suggested keeping the groups the same way year after year, to develop continuity and perhaps stoke rivalries regardless of the year-to-year records and the lottery nature of the draw — think the first meeting between San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama and Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren last season, an in-season tournament game in Oklahoma last November.
The league decided against it, however.
Eight groups will advance from group play to the knockout rounds: the six group winners and two wild playing cards. The wild playing cards are the groups from every convention that completed with the most effective information among the many second-place groups in group play.
In contrast to final season, extra time scoring is not going to be a think about tiebreaker outcomes.
“(Warriors coach) Steve Kerr had a comment after the final group stage game, whether joking or not, that they considered whether to intentionally send the game to overtime to run out the score, to try to win by the 12 points they needed to advance to the knockout rounds,” Wasch mentioned.
So to protect the integrity of the video games and forestall some contentious finishes, they eliminated extra time scoring from level differential and whole factors tiebreakers.
The only-elimination video games of the NBA Cup quarterfinals might be held Dec. 10 and 11. The upper-seeded groups will host the quarters of their house arenas. The 4 winners will advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas.
(In the course of the knockout stage, the 22 groups that did not qualify will every play two to-be-determined, regular-season video games.)
Las Vegas, the house of NBA Summer season League and potential house of an growth crew, serves as floor zero for the NBA Cup semifinals and remaining on Dec. 14 and Dec. 17, respectively.
For the 4 groups, spending a couple of days in Las Vegas in December may definitely function incentive to place additional effort into these video games, together with a financial prize for the successful crew that nets $500,000 per participant. (The runner-up receives $200,000 per participant.)
Las Vegas served as a pseudo-home recreation for the Lakers final yr due to the proximity in comparison with New Orleans, Milwaukee and Indianapolis. Add within the fast turnaround from the quarterfinals, and it was tough to create a real home-court benefit for the groups exterior of L.A.
“It’s a double-edged sword,” Wasch admitted.
They’ve added an additional day in between the semifinals and remaining, together with avoiding the NFL schedule, to create for a greater environment for followers. They consider they’ve made it extra accessible general.
“And by virtue of having the semifinals on this Saturday, it’s a little bit easier to conceive of a fan maybe wanting to make a Vegas trip for the weekend, as opposed to flying out to Vegas for a game that tipped at 2 p.m. on a Thursday,” Wasch mentioned. “Many of our fans work, and so that was that was a real challenge. So we think we’ve eased up the opportunity for fans who do want to attend that Saturday semifinal doubleheader.
“This thing may rise to the level years down the road where it becomes such an integral part of the season of the competition that you do get that energy and that attendance, but at least, we think we’ve made it easier, and we do think we’ll see a little bit more excitement and attraction from fans, let’s say, outside of the L.A. (market).”
And it additionally places Las Vegas within the heart of basketball dialog for one thing apart from Summer season League, within the coronary heart of the NBA season.
