LAS VEGAS — The NBA on Saturday unveiled the plans and format for its new tournament Las Vegas style, with ample glitz and volume it hopes will prove fitting for the occasion.
The league will return to Las Vegas’ T-Mobile Arena Dec. 7 and 9 to determine the champion of its first in-season tournament, a concept NBA commissioner Adam Silver said was 15 years in the making and part of the new collective bargaining agreement with the National Basketball Players Association.
“We thought what a perfect opportunity for a global league like the NBA, and it’s a perfect fit for our game,” Silver said. “We chose Las Vegas to host the semifinals and finals because this city knows how to host big events. I look forward to coming back in early December for that final four.”
With that, he also warned, “New traditions take time.”
The hope is the championship will be valued by players and that the games, to be included in the regular season up to the tournament’s title game, will be viewed by fans as what NBA president of league operations Byron Spruell called “games of consequence.”
“It takes time to get everyone on board,” NBA executive vice president Joe Dumars said. “That’s the first thing you have to have going in, knowing not everybody might be on board right away. But what you hear a lot about in today’s game is how different the game is from prior generations. This is an era of newness. Players are used to that. They’re used to things being different than they used to be. That’s why I think it’ll be easy for them to buy in.”
The tournament will be similar to European events and the WNBA’s Commissioner’s Cup tournament, though with key differences in scheduling.
All 30 teams will play four games, two at home and two on the road, in the group stage of the tournament, with the league divided into six groups of five teams based on the previous season’s records and a random drawing.
The group stage games will be played within the first six weeks of the season. League schedules to be announced next month will include 80 games, including group stage games, rather than the customary 82. Teams that do not advance out of the group stage games will have two additional games added to their schedules to get to an 82-game season.
The Rockets are in Western Conference Group B, which also includes the Denver Nuggets, Los Angeles Clippers, New Orleans Pelicans and Dallas Mavericks.
Group A will include the Memphis Grizzlies, Phoenix Suns, Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz and Portland Trail Blazers. Group C includes the Sacramento Kings, Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder and the San Antonio Spurs.
In the Eastern Conference, Group A includes the Cleveland Cavaliers, Philadelphia 76ers, Atlanta Hawks, Indiana Pacers and Detroit Pistons. Group B has the Milwaukee Bucks, New York Knicks, Miami Heat, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets. Group C consists of the Boston Celtics, Brooklyn Nets, Toronto Raptors, Chicago Bulls and Orlando Magic.
The six group stage winners, along with one wild card team per conference, will advance to a knockout stage. The wild card teams will be the second-place teams in group play with the best winning percentages.
The knockout round games will be single elimination. All in-season tournament games, except the championship game, will count in the league standings and toward teams’ and players’ statistics.
Players on the championship-winning team will receive a bonus of $500,000 each, with players on the runner-up receiving $200,000 per each. The other players in the semifinal games will receive $100,000. Players who advance out of group play to quarterfinal games will win $50,000.
An all-tournament team and tournament MVP will be named.
The league considered tournament schedules that would have had the event held during a break in the season, during the All-Star break, or during the season before choosing to meld tournament play with regular-season games.
The goal, said Evan Wasch, executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics, was to find something that would be “additive and not disruptive.” He said the success of the play-in tournament combined with the increasing global influence on the league made the time right.
“Teams can actually win something new that they haven’t been able to win in the past and/or build some momentum through the Christmas break all the way through All-Star and then through play-in, playoff and Finals games,” Spruell said. “We think it’s going to build a momentum builder early in the season.”
The hope is that it will serve that function for the league and its season as well as individual teams. The belief was that the play-in tournament, which produced a Finals team this season when the Miami Heat became Eastern Conference champion, offered an example of how increasing stakes can make regular-season games viewed as having greater “consequence.”
“Last season was the single-most competitive season in the history of the NBA,” Wasch said. “That was in large part because of the play-in tournament, because of the draft lottery. Getting more teams in the mix really improved the competition. The conversation, as Adam said, has been in discussion for at least 15 years. This predates any discussion of load management or the devaluing of the regular season.
“This is about creating a second championship. We want something else players and fans will be able to chase and celebrate.”
