LAS VEGAS — When Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked Friday about the second edition of the NBA Cup and if he would change anything about the event, he smiled.
“I don’t think there’s anything to change,” said Antetokounmpo, whose Bucks lost in the semifinals last season in Las Vegas. “My room is nice. The sand here is nice. [the assembled media] make it feel real.
“I heard a couple of players as we were walking in and they were like, ‘Oh, wow, this is real.’ That’s how I felt last year.”
Last season’s NBA Cup champions LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers did not return to Las Vegas. The defending NBA champion Boston Celtics also failed to advance beyond the group. But with the tournament culminating Tuesday night with a showdown between MVP favorites Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, there will be plenty of star power on display as the second NBA Cup champion is determined.
“We are very pleased with the second year of this format and the first year of the Emirates NBA Cup,” Evan Wasch, the league’s executive vice president of strategy and analytics, told ESPN. “It’s great to see the players buy in and really compete for something during this first part of the season.”
That doesn’t mean the league’s seasonal tournament is a finished product.
Ahead of Tuesday’s final between the Bucks and the Oklahoma City Thunder (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC), we spoke with league power brokers in Las Vegas, plus coaches and team executives in both the tournament’s final four like around the league. – about what has worked, what hasn’t and what’s next for the NBA Cup.
The adjusted schedule has worked
The biggest change the league made after last year’s inaugural NBA Cup was adjusting the schedule for the knockout rounds. Last season, the entire process was completed in six days:
-
Quarterfinals at home Monday and Tuesday
-
Semifinals in Las Vegas on Thursday
-
Championship game in Las Vegas on Saturday
As a result, last year the Bucks arrived in Las Vegas early Wednesday morning and then played the Thursday afternoon game about 30 hours later. It also meant the NBA went head-to-head with the NFL on both Monday and Thursday.
This year, the NBA made several changes to the schedule, extending it to eight days in total:
-
Quarterfinals at home Tuesday and Wednesday
-
Semifinals in Las Vegas on Saturday
-
Championship game in Las Vegas on Tuesday
The change has been welcomed by everyone involved, as it has allowed teams to catch their breath, fully prepare for the knockout games, and avoid the difficult change that Milwaukee faced last year. It also produced two lively, competitive matches in Saturday’s semifinals and many dramatic moments in the quarterfinals.
1:27
Rockets prevail as controversial finish leaves Warriors stunned
A controversial call sets up Jalen Green’s free throws to give the Rockets the lead, then Houston shuts down the Warriors on the final possession to advance to the NBA Cup semifinals.
But adapting the tournament to the existing schedule will still present many challenges. In a 10-day span, the NBA will have one day with no games, another two days with just one game, and another three with just two games. It was all necessary to allow the NBA Cup to stand out, but it does the league a disservice by reducing back-to-back games on the schedule. “This makes the schedule for this week really unstable,” a Western Conference executive said.
However, the four quarterfinals and both semifinals produced exciting, close games, drawing the kind of attention to the early part of the league schedule that typically leans toward the NFL and college football.
“It has obtained the desired result,” said the executive. “There’s more to these games than any old game.
“Did you hear [Steve] Kerr’s comments afterwards [Golden State’s quarterfinal loss]. They were angry. “They wanted to be there.”
Neutral site games remain a work in progress
Tuesday night’s final will show how much the change from Saturday’s final to Tuesday will affect both attendance and TV ratings (although not having the Lakers involved will likely affect both as well).
Despite the competitiveness of Saturday’s semifinals, the atmosphere inside T-Mobile Arena was lukewarm. The crowds for both games were in line with what the league saw last year: a slight increase from 16,837 to 17,113 for the first game, and a slight drop to 18,017 (a sellout) for the second semifinal (with the Lakers). to 17,937.
League officials were happy with those attendance numbers, which were buoyed by a strong Atlanta contingent that was in town to see the Falcons play the Las Vegas Raiders on “Monday Night Football.”
“You could definitely hear them in the crowd tonight,” Hawks star Trae Young said after Atlanta’s semifinal loss. “It was good to have them here supporting us. I wish we could have won for them.”
Still, the games clearly lacked the energy of a home game, a stark contrast to the atmosphere of the Cup quarterfinals. Last year, the NBA benefited from the Lakers (with the largest fan base big league just a four-hour drive away) will win the inaugural Cup. So far, this year’s tournament has shown the challenges of playing in a neutral environment, regardless of the competition.
What changes could be next for the NBA Cup?
In conversations this week, several sources mentioned the possibility of playing the semifinals at home and then having the championship game in Las Vegas. This is similar to how the UEFA Champions League is played in soccer and other cup-type tournaments. And it would certainly create a better environment for games.
The counterargument is that it would remove the carrot of a midseason trip to Las Vegas for two of the four teams traveling now. Perhaps most importantly, it would also require teams to leave more stadium dates open to host games, a major hurdle many franchises with multi-use stadiums must overcome.
However, a change is definitely coming to the NBA Cup: its next television home.
After TNT and ESPN split hosting duties for the first two seasons, Amazon will handle the quarterfinals, semifinals and championship game. There have been discussions between the NBA and Amazon about possible schedule changes at some point in the future, league sources told ESPN.
1:28
SGA drops 32 points to lead OKC to NBA Cup final
Shai Gilgeous-Alexander cooks the Rockets with 32 points to lead the Thunder to the NBA Cup Final.
That includes moving the tournament a little further into the regular season. But those same sources warned that such discussions were preliminary and that changes were far from likely to be implemented next season.
A later end to the season would allow for another adjustment that several sources mentioned over the weekend: doubling the length of the group stage from four to eight games. The argument for that change would be to increase the chances of the best teams advancing.
Last year, no team in the top five in the West reached the knockout rounds. This year, the two best teams in the East (the Cleveland Cavaliers and the Celtics) were left out.
“If you play eight pool games,” said another Western executive, “the Celtics end up in [the knockout rounds]”.
The NBA showed its willingness to adapt on the fly by making immediate changes to the playoff schedule after last season’s inaugural event. And while the league is happy with the tournament moving forward as part of the schedule, it’s clear that the NBA Cup will continue to evolve.
“In terms of changes for future years, we will always look for ways to improve the experience for our teams, players, fans and partners,” Wasch said. “So while there’s nothing I can say, it’s definitely something we’re looking to adjust.”
