I LOVE that World Cup proposal they are throwing out there. Zach Lowe and Woj are saying the idea is gaining traction.
Why the NBA Could (and Should) Look More Like the World Cup
Adam Silver isn’t shy about trying new things. Late Friday night, the league office sent a survey to all 30 general managers asking for their feedback on several different formats to restart the season. One proposal is to replace the first round of the playoffs with a “group stage” in which the 20 teams with the best records would be placed into four groups of five teams. Teams would play two games against each opponent in their own group, and the teams with the two best records from each group would qualify for the second round of the playoffs. Eight teams would advance, and then teams would play seven-game series to determine the champion.
Silver
admitted in Paris this January that he’s “jealous in certain ways of soccer globally,” and advocated for the NBA to adopt a soccer-style midseason tournament and a late-season play-in tournament. The plan stalled, but the group stage could be an opportunity for the NBA to try to capture some World Cup soccer magic. A total of 80 games could be played over two and a half weeks, and every one of them would be a must-win. It’d be a gauntlet during which legacies would be on the line and young stars could vie for greatness. The NBA has never experienced anything like it.
The league could still pick up where it left off, with all 30 teams playing a handful more regular-season games, or go straight to the postseason using the current standings and the current playoff format. But Silver has been pushing innovative changes for years, and front office executives have long believed that the commissioner’s preference is to use this restart as a time to experiment.
What the NBA Is Discussing About Its Restart[/paste:font]
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It’s a pivotal week ahead for the league. NBPA executive director Michele Roberts has been conducting Zoom calls with individual teams over the past week to detail potential paths to resume play, and the financial impact of any decision. On Wednesday, the NBA’s advisory/finance committee will hold a conference call to discuss plans moving forward, according to sources. And this coming Friday, the board of governors will meet and Silver will formally present formats for resuming the season, according to multiple league sources. Possibly as soon as next week, teams and players will vote on which path to go when games resume, all of which will likely be hosted at Disney World. Here’s why the group stage offers the most upside for the NBA and how it could work.
The Group Stage Format
The 16 current playoff teams would qualify for the group stage, plus the four teams with the next-best records (Trail Blazers, Pelicans, Kings, and Spurs). The remaining 10 teams would be done for the season. The survey sent to each general manager noted that “tiers” would first be created using the regular-season standings to ensure competitive balance between the groups.
For example, the 20 teams could be allocated into five tiers in descending order by record.
- Tier 1: Bucks, Lakers, Raptors, Clippers
- Tier 2: Celtics, Nuggets, Jazz, Heat
- Tier 3: Thunder, Rockets, Pacers, Sixers
- Tier 4: Mavericks, Grizzlies, Nets, Magic
- Tier 5: Blazers, Pelicans, Kings, Spurs
Groups could then be randomly drawn, with one team from each tier going into each group. The NBA is working on approaches to fairly balance the groupings, such as limiting each group to only three Western Conference teams, according to multiple front office sources. Drawings for the group stage could be televised, league sources say. The NBA draft lottery has yielded between 2.4 million and 4.4 million viewers
the past 10 years on ESPN; a live drawing of the groups, even with Silver and a representative from every team broadcasting from their own homes, would do major numbers. Here’s one draw of the groups based on a random number generator:
Teams would play opponents within their own groups twice, meaning every team would play eight games. The two teams in each group with the best record would move on. A tie-breaking procedure has yet to be settled on, but utilizing the highest winning percentage from the regular season would be a logical first option. The league could then use its
existing tiebreakers to determine playoff seedings, with head-to-head records being the next criteria.
Each of the groups from our example is even—they should produce matchups that are challenging and entertaining, and offer plenty of story lines to drive discussion during the weeks of training camp. Take Group 2, for example. We could watch an afternoon matinee with Houston’s pick-and-roll attack facing off against Miami’s zone defense, then a marquee matchup between LeBron and Zion. Two days later, we’d get to watch the Lakers face the Rockets. In Group 1, Damian Lillard and a now-healthy Blazers squad would get a shot at making a playoff run, but they’d have to go through multiple elite defenses to do it—facing the Bucks one day, the Sixers the next, and then the Jazz. Every single day, all day long, there would be multiple great games to watch.
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