Will the NBA Cup become a treasured tradition? League hopes so, but it’s too soon to tell
No one knows if the NBA Cup will be around in 30 years.
Heck, no one knows what the world will look like in three decades let alone the NBA.
Thirty years ago, who knew that a player would score 40,000 career points and play at an All-NBA level at almost 40 years old? And who knew coming out of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics that three-plus decades later, the league’s MVP would be won by a player born outside of the United States for six consecutive seasons from 2019-2024?
The league’s plans for the NBA Cup are long term. It rebranded the “in-season tournament,” designed a trophy and added a title sponsor for the event which began last season.
The NBA is invested – including a significant promotional campaign that features actors Michael Imperioli and Rosario Dawson and NBA stars, including Steph Curry; specially designed NBA Cup courts for each team (NBA Commissioner Adam Silver admittedly is a fan of the colorful courts); and unique uniforms for home and road games.
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The Emirates NBA Cup begins Tuesday, and the league looks to build on a modicum of success from last season that concluded with the Los Angeles Lakers beating the Indiana Pacers. TV ratings for the NBA Cup final averaged 4.58 million viewers and was the most-watched non-Christmas game since February 2018. It helped that it was the Lakers - featuring LeBron James and Anthony Davis - and an exciting Pacers team led by blossoming star Tyrese Haliburton.
As the 67-game event wrapped group play and headed for the knockout rounds in the quarterfinals, semifinals and final, teams wanted to win. And there is a financial reward, including nearly $515,000 this season for each player on the NBA Cup championship team.
A refresher course: The 15 teams from the East were divided into three groups of five and the 15 teams from the West were divided into three groups of five. Teams in the same group will play each other once – two games at home, two games on the road on Tuesdays and Fridays, starting Tuesday and wrapping up group play Dec. 3.
Four teams from each conference advance to the quarterfinals – the winner of each group plus one wild card (a team that finished second in its group and won the tiebreaker) from each conference. The semifinals are Dec. 14 and the championship game (East winner vs. West winner) is Dec. 17 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. All games, except the title game, count in a team’s overall win-loss record.
The league made minor tweaks to the NBA Cup such as excluding overtime scoring from points differential and total points tiebreakers. And there are intriguing groups: Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Golden State and Memphis in Group C in the West, and New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Brooklyn and Charlotte in Group A in the East.
The NBA seeks to create a meaningful event early in the season that can generate interest post-World Series and pre-Christmas as the NFL and college football seasons unfold – and with games on nights when there are traditionally few high-profile football games.
Eleven months ago at the NBA Cup final, Silver said, "I want to thank all of the players in the league and the coaches, of course, the teams, for embracing this new concept. I know it doesn’t come without challenges. There’s no doubt there’s some things that we are learning this time through. Overall, we are thrilled with the interest we’ve seen so far this season."
Traditions don’t happen overnight. Or over the course of two seasons. Now, we can make real-time judgements on TV ratings, ticket sales, fan interest and the competition of games.
But the true measure of the NBA Cup’s success – or absence of it – will be revealed in 10, 15, 20 or 30 years.
Follow Jeff Zillgitt on social media @JeffZillgitt
