How a mid-season, NCAA-style tournament in the NBA could stop players from skipping games

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March 21, 2017 11:51 PM

A mid-season tournament could solve NBA's resting stars problem

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The uproar over star NBA players taking nights off became a topic again in recent weeks as the league's three best teams — the Golden State Warriors, the San Antonio Spurs, and Cleveland Cavaliers — all had their best players sit out nationally televised games.

more fuel to the growing sentiment among people in the NBA that the season is too long.

This is something LeBron James addressed during the 2014-15 season when the league experimented with shorter games.

James told ESPN

Of course, the problem is, while the players may want a shorter schedule, they are almost certainly not willing to take a pay cut that would come with it since the NBA would be losing revenue, both in the form of fans at games and rights to games being sold to TV networks.

So how does the NBA shorten their season and not lose revenue? There may actually be a simple solution and it is one they have already flirted with — a mid-season NCAA-style tournament.

In 2014, NBA commissioner Adam Silver brought up the idea of a single-elimination, mid-season tournament. Perhaps the best comparison would be the mid-season domestic cup tournaments held in European soccer leagues.

Silver didn't offer any specifics at the time, suggesting the idea was still in its infancy, but it is easy to envision a way to add this tournament and solve the problem of resting stars at the same time.

Here is how it might work:

In the end, the NBA and its players get a shorter regular season and would probably make more money. In addition, players are going to be less likely to take regular-season games off since there will be fewer of them and they will be more important.

Meanwhile, fans get a super-duper-awesome tournament at a time of the season when only the true diehard fans are really paying attention.

Everybody wins.

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