Viva Las Vegas & the NBA Cup
Hello World,
The Inaugural NBA In-Season Tournament has now come and gone, and I think it was one of the best things the NBA has done in a long time. This weekend, history was made as LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers became the first-ever winners of the NBA Cup. It was truly a spectacular event that has now made LeBron synonymous with basketball in Sin City. Although he may not have gotten a team out of this, the NBA may have just found a reason for people to care about basketball games in November and December.
The Tournament began back on November 3rd and had teams play in group play to make it to the knockout stage. It made Tuesday and Friday night basketball in November actually mean something. Even with some courts looking being less extravagant than others, they were definitely eye catching and made people take notice.
Then, the winning teams of their group and a wild card team from each conference would make it to the knockout stage. One game would be played at the higher-seed homecourt, and then the semi-final and final would take place in Vegas. We saw some competitive matchups, but it ultimately ended up being the Lakers vs the Indiana Pacers.
Not even Hollywood could've written Adam Silver a more perfect script. He had one of the most storied franchises with arguably the greatest player of all time on one side vs. a young upstart team with its own rising star and a bunch of young, exciting pieces around him. It showed exactly why a new trophy could work, bringing meaning to random November and December games, but also allowing younger teams to get the experience of playing in big-time situations early on in the year so that by the time April rolls around, they are more prepared.
On top of that, any player who made it to Vegas received $100,000, and players in the finals made $200,000 for competing and $500,000 for winning it all. Although players like LeBron and Anthony Davis make over $40 million in salaries each year, some of their teammates make nowhere near that. For example, the two-way players will see their salary jump 50% as they receive their 50% payout, which increases their contract from $500k to $750k overnight.
In other good news, Adam Silver says that after the success of the logo being on the court, the NBA is considering bringing logos back on the court for the playoffs. I could not be more excited about this as I feel seeing the logo on the court really elevates the moment. All that we ask Mr. Silver is please don't do the colors, keep the colors for the tournament, make it different, that's fine, and don't ruin the NBA Finals!
With that being said, there definitely needs to be tweaks, as many players complained about the points differentials, and we can get into that in the future. But looking at it in its entirety, the NBA and Adam Silver knocked this out of the park. I cannot wait until the next NBA Cup!