The NBA is easily the most ambitious American sports league. Those in charge are always looking for new ways to expand the league’s influence across the globe – take, for instance, the two regular season games that took place in Mexico City this year. On Thursday and Saturday, Phoenix played games against Dallas and San Antonio. Also on Thursday, Denver and Indiana squared off in London.
Sending teams to play in major cities outside of the United States and Canada is a cool idea. But what if the league takes it to the next level? Adam Silver proposed just that during a press conference where he brought up the idea of a midseason round-robin tournament involving multiple NBA teams in Mexico City.
“It ultimately may make sense to bring more teams, rather than just have two teams play each other for a single event, to maybe bring multiple teams and have some sort of midseason tournament,” Silver said during a press conference before the Suns vs. Spurs matchup. He also revealed that NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum has looked into whether there’s something “new and different” the league could do.
Silver has had plenty of new ideas during his tenure in charge of the NBA, but this would easily be the most ambitious. The commish has also brought up a similar idea in the past, as he mentioned doing a potential midseason tournament in Las Vegas back in the summer of 2014.
It’s important to remember that there are a ton of things for the league to consider – namely that it could be hard to convince multiple NBA teams to play a round-robin tournament in the middle of the season in a foreign country, especially if they wouldn’t count for anything and be in addition to the 82 regular season games teams already play.
But if the league were to pull this off, it would easily be the biggest breath of fresh air to hit the Association in some time. Would the league be bold enough to try to do something like this with all 30 teams, or would it be a small, four-team tournament? Would it replace two regular season games, or would it be its own, standalone event? If so, would teams take this seriously or would it be an opportunity to get younger guys playing time? Can it be a 3-on-3 tournament, a la BIG3, with the BIG3 champs playing the team that wins this?
Even if this never happens, it’s so much fun to imagine the league holding this kind of event as a way to bring the game to other countries. Plus everyone loves a good tournament, especially a good single-elimination tournament, so let’s do this, NBA.
