How would the NBA’s single-elimination tournament work?
To add a little spice to it, the seeds for the said tournament should be based on divisional records instead of the regular season standings. Here is why. First, the regular season standings already dictate seeding for the playoffs. It would be redundant and monotonous for it to dictate the mid-season tournament seeding as well. Also, in the other major sports leagues, divisional games are matters of bitter rivalry that carry a different meaning and significance than the rest of them.
You’ve got your Yankees vs. Red Sox, Bears vs. Packers, Cowboys vs. Giants, and so on. The NBA is currently deprived of such rivalries. I bet if you ask an average NBA fan to mention the teams that are in the same division as their favorite team, 3 out of 4 will not know who their division “rivals” are.
So, we already have the place, time, format, and seeding settled. How can you structure such a tournament? How many teams would take part in it? The answer to the last question is all 30 teams! As to the structure, it’s straightforward. It will be a bracket-like NCAA tournament, with the two number one seeds having a first-round bye. The other 28 teams will face each other according to their division’s standings.
As is customary, the highest seeds face the lowest seeds. The first round will consist of 14 single-elimination games. The winners of those games move on to the quarterfinals, where the two number one seeds that had the bye join the party. After this, we move on to the semis, and so forth. After all, is said and done, we will have gone through 29 exhilarating single-elimination games.
Fans would certainly be interested in such an event. But what about teams and players? Reports have circulated about players getting paid a couple of extra million dollars in order to get them to buy in. This is probably enough to incentivize most of the players to try to win the competition. Is it enough for the superstars, though?
In particular, those that are on contending teams. Probably not. Like I said before, winning the tournament will never come close to winning a title as an achievement. Players like Kevin Durant, Lebron James, Giannis Antetokounmpo, and Steph Curry may not be interested in going all out on a tournament and risking injury just to win a couple more million dollars. Their teams might not be interested in letting them play as well.