Mid-season tournament being discussed...how can we make it worth it for everyone.

[sp6r=underrated]

Guys already make so much money and people already have minimized pretty much everything that isnt a championship. Youre just not going to be able to get these guys to care about this stuff. It is what it is.

That's the issue the NBA for decades built a title or loser attitude. Now it has been embraced by fans Silver is right that it is harmful but the proposed solution doesn't fix it.

[Fencer reregistered]

I think the midseason tournament will go hand in hand with NBA having 32 teams.

- 32 teams allows you to have an NCAA tournament style to determine a winner.
- If losers keeping playing other teams in 5 rounds then you can actually rank teams in order from 1 to 32
- The rank of 1 to 32 can be the basis of remuneration in the form of lottery odds or cash

How about having the tournament factor in some way into season-end standings?

Actually, the simplest way to do that might be best -- just add the tournament won-loss record into the won-loss record for the whole season.

[sp6r=underrated]

The amount and powerfulness of the dumb ideas in this thread is amazing.

The mid season tournament is all about Silver going after gambling dollars. That’s it. Top to bottom. His big revenue add for owners is gambling. Stern wouldn’t go there, Silver does.

What Silver doesn’t get is that players won’t care, nor will teams. Are there going to be rings? Parades? Prestige? Nah. Congrats you’re the mid season tournament champs and…what? Pointless. It’s a laughable idea.

The way American sports work is one champion per season. Silver doesn’t have the power to change that, but he won’t care as long as there are brackets and people bet on it and the NBA gets a cut.

I wasn't cynical enough. You're probably right

[Ballerhogger]

Waste of time . Teams who are top seeds in seedings will not put much effort into it. Money is no objection to these players. a mid season trophy? There's only one trophy that matters.

[Ballerhogger]

The only way you can make teams care if you can secure a playoff spot.

[SNPA]

The amount and powerfulness of the dumb ideas in this thread is amazing.

The mid season tournament is all about Silver going after gambling dollars. That’s it. Top to bottom. His big revenue add for owners is gambling. Stern wouldn’t go there, Silver does.

What Silver doesn’t get is that players won’t care, nor will teams. Are there going to be rings? Parades? Prestige? Nah. Congrats you’re the mid season tournament champs and…what? Pointless. It’s a laughable idea.

The way American sports work is one champion per season. Silver doesn’t have the power to change that, but he won’t care as long as there are brackets and people bet on it and the NBA gets a cut.

I wasn't cynical enough. You're probably right

Happy to add cynicism wherever I can.

[sp6r=underrated]

The amount and powerfulness of the dumb ideas in this thread is amazing.

The mid season tournament is all about Silver going after gambling dollars. That’s it. Top to bottom. His big revenue add for owners is gambling. Stern wouldn’t go there, Silver does.

What Silver doesn’t get is that players won’t care, nor will teams. Are there going to be rings? Parades? Prestige? Nah. Congrats you’re the mid season tournament champs and…what? Pointless. It’s a laughable idea.

The way American sports work is one champion per season. Silver doesn’t have the power to change that, but he won’t care as long as there are brackets and people bet on it and the NBA gets a cut.

I wasn't cynical enough. You're probably right

Happy to add cynicism wherever I can.

And to add society's embrace of gambling over the last 10 yrs is likely to prove disastarous. I'm an MLB fan and I was watching a game were the ad offered me like $500 free to sign up, or something crazy.

And I'll thought was is if it is profitable to get people to sign up giving away $500 some people must be hemmoraging cash

[MrBigShot]

I don't think there is any realistic incentive for the players to risk injury in a midseason tournament.

[Raps in 4]

I wasn't cynical enough. You're probably right

Happy to add cynicism wherever I can.

And to add society's embrace of gambling over the last 10 yrs is likely to prove disastarous. I'm an MLB fan and I was watching a game were the ad offered me like $500 free to sign up, or something crazy.

And I'll thought was is if it is profitable to get people to sign up giving away $500 some people must be hemmoraging cash

What's worse is that society is fine with exposing children to gambling now too. All sports video games today feature a virtual casino where you can pay real money for a small chance at obtaining better players for your team. Mobile games are even worse, with virtually every game just being a gambling simulator, where again, you pay real money for a small chance at obtaining better weapons or armour or whatever. We've been developing an entire generation of gambling addicts over the past decade.

[City of Trees]

Radio host in Sacramento suggested the tournament structure should follow the WNBA's Commissioner's cup. Apparently how it works is there are games already on your schedule designated a Commissioner's cup game. Players don't play extra games or log additional travel miles. It's a creative way to incentives regular season games.

This has been known for awhile. It makes the idea even dumber.

It’s not a random Tuesday Kings/Pistons game, it’s a round in a tournament! Ok. Whatever. It’s just stupid.

I agree it's kind of stupid but if the league is hellbent on a tournament my preference would be the commissioner's cup style vs. a one location tournament adding games to the season.

My take is if the NBA's goal is to increase the importance of each game then it only makes sense to play fewer games.

[JoseRizal]

Pre-season and play-in is enough. Mid-season is overkill...

[sp6r=underrated]

Happy to add cynicism wherever I can.

And to add society's embrace of gambling over the last 10 yrs is likely to prove disastarous. I'm an MLB fan and I was watching a game were the ad offered me like $500 free to sign up, or something crazy.

And I'll thought was is if it is profitable to get people to sign up giving away $500 some people must be hemmoraging cash

All sports video games today feature a virtual casino where you can pay real money for a small chance at obtaining better players for your team. Mobile games are even worse, with virtually every game just being a gambling simulator. And all this is marketed to kids. We've been developing an entire generation of gambling addicts over the past decade.

Thanks for the hat tip about video games. I've aged out of em so I didn't know they were basically gambling hooks. Which doesn't surprise me.

https://www.sup.org/books/title/?id=11232

This was a pretty cool book I read about ignorance. I used to think of ignorance the way most people do, not possessing due to a lack of education. As example, I can't speak Japanese. If I had an incentive to learn and a teacher I could learn it.

This book discusses other forms of ignorance such as how knowledge that was once widespread is forgotten, requiring lessons to be re-learned. As example, humans have been using lead as a metal since antiquity. And they've known since antiquity it is toxic. But the cycle continually repeats itself

1. A society figure out lead is a very useful metal, it is.
2. It uses lead broadly
3. Problems are caused by lead poisioning.
4. The society learns how toxic lead is.
5. They stop using it.
6. Lead poisoning problems gradually disappear
7. Humans become "ignorant" of lead toxicity, and step 1 is repeated.

Widespread gambling is quite similar. It is quite harmful to local economies: https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/08/a-good-way-to-wreck-a-local-economy-build-casinos/375691/. But we've forgotten the lesson and sadly we're going to have to re-learn it.

[Ruma85]

You could give all players on the winning team a lump bonus midseason.

Players making 25 mil or higher each recieve a bonus of 4% of their contract value that year, while players making from 5.00whatev million to 24.999 million get a one million dollar check, and everyone making below 5 million for the year gets a $750,000 check.
Same for coaches or maybe $500k.
(edit: on 2nd thought, give these things to the actual champs at the the end of the year, and instead give equivalent to half of that package to the mid season tourney winners )

Then give them home court in the playoffs regardless of their seeding, unless the team they are matched up against is a top 2 seed, or won the season series against the tourney-winning team.

And I liked the idea proposed of getting the 31st pick there being 61 picks in the draft. Give them 31, and a $15 mil trade exception that wont count againsts the cap, that expires at the deadline, so if they want they can trade both at the deadline for a role player, or just keep the pick.

The best idea i heard for this.

i’m not against as most people, if it’s done right without adding more games i think it could be a major success, Though if i had to choose i rather stay the way it is.

[Hungry]

I really don't like the idea of doing some sort of qualifying round and then an eight team tournament, just do a full 30 team single elimination tournament. Going hand-in-hand with this you'd then cut the season down to 76 games so that you now play all non-divisional conference teams 3 times.

[Ein Sof]

Here's an idea:

We host it after the regular season and the winner gets a shiny trophy and media hottakes about being top 4867465 all-time. How's that sound?

[Chinook]

The alternative to this is to implement draconian anti-player statutes to force guys to play. The regular season is where owners and players make their money. Both sides need to take it seriously and offer a good product. A mid-season tournament is a perfectly valid way to do that, and frankly it boggles my mind that so many fans think it's cool to be against it. I watch the NBA to be entertained. I don't get paid or anything else to do so. Trophies are nice, but they make no meaningful impact on my life. Moments of seeing my team triumph do. That doesn't only come from LOBs. I still rave about the 2015 summer league title the Spurs won. I'd be excited if they won a competitive tournament in January or whatever.

The league should do everything it can to reduce the number of mundane games and increase the number of high-stakes games. That actually does mean that they should embrace resting players -- the Spurs were an old team that could take on super teams and win because their talent was properly managed, and even if the stars weren't always there, their deep bench could and did win many games. The key shouldn't be to force guys to play 82 games again, but if they do go down to the 66-70 games they need to, then they can't just keep a normal schedule. They need more things like the play-in to draw revenue, and they need everyone who's able to play to go out on the court and put out the best product they can. Ideally that would just be an understanding between the two of sides, but it seems like it might have to be a fight, which sucks because the owners would actually be right for once.

[Time for Change]

Waste of time . Teams who are top seeds in seedings will not put much effort into it. Money is no objection to these players. a mid season trophy? There's only one trophy that matters.

That’s understating it. I’d expect top teams to aggressively throw the games to get eliminated ASAP and get extra rest. It will be a bad look for the league.

[CIN-C-STAR]

How about 10 tournament games for each team, and each one counts X500 toward the standings than other games.
That way I only have to watch 10 games all season instead of 82

[Modulate]

What's the point of this mid-season tournament again?

[bstein14]

I don't mind a mid season event but I think it needs to just be an East vs West event. Schedule 30 games (each team plays 2) at a neutral site like Vegas for the week. Whichever conference wins more of these games ends up getting HCA in the NBA Finals.

I don't like the idea of having some teams play more games in the season than other teams. Prefer to have everything balanced.