While in a gym on one side of Las Vegas hundreds of young men with an NBA dream try to prove they are worthy, across town the rich guys in suits — the owners — are sitting down to figure out how to make the league more profitable.
Would a mid-season NBA Tournament do that?
The long NBA season is a grind and speaking to the media in Las Vegas Tuesday NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the owners were floating the idea around of a mid-season tournament in Las Vegas. From Steve Aschburner of NBA.com.
The popularity of the summer league in Las Vegas – with attendance up 25 percent, Silver said – has the league open to ideas for a greater role in the nation’s gambling capital. One possibility, mentioned without details as a brainstorm from the competition committee: A midseason tournament of some sort.
The NBA season is already 82 games leading into a two-month playoff format, so an FA Cup style tournament only works if you reduce the number of regular season games, essentially taking a mid-season break to play it. You may say “that’s a good idea” but good luck convincing owners to give up local-revenue — fewer home games lowers season ticket revenue, in-arena sponsor revenue, money generated from parking and concessions, and so on — for some centralized tournament. It’s not really feasible.
But this is another sign that, unlike David Stern at times, Silver is the kind of leader open to ideas and discussing just about anything.
Other things Silver mentioned out of the owner and competition committee meetings in Vegas:
• The NBA will test out a centralized replay system starting with WNBA games in September. However, this will work a little differently than the NHL system where the guys in the league office make the calls (on if it’s a goal or not, for example) and relay the decision to the on-ice officials. In the NBA version the league office will have in-office officials cull the replays so when the on-the-court officials walk over and flip the monitor around to look at it the league can, in theory, quickly give them the best angles to make a decision. Ben Golliver of Sports Illustrated had the direct quotes:
“Now, as you know,” Silver said in February, “the game stops, the referees walk courtside, turn the monitor around, talk to the truck, order up the replays. And I think that it’s our belief if we can get it right, that if have you officials, in essence, located at headquarters, at a central site, that that process can begin immediately, they then can communicate with the officials and that will save time.”
We’ll see if that really speeds things up, or leads to the right calls. My guess is Doc Rivers has his doubts. So do I.
• Silver said he was “moved” by LeBron James’ decision to return to Cleveland. Again Golliver of Sports Illustrated with the quotes:
“When I read his first-person account on Sports Illustrated, I really was moved by it. It says a lot about who he is, who he has become over the last four years. His statement about northeast Ohio, about hard work [and] this being about something larger than basketball and the NBA.”
“Maybe I would have had a different feeling if he was just shopping his services to wherever he thought he could have the greatest chance of winning a championship,” Silver said. “Not that that wouldn’t have been his right. But I thought that [his choice] to go back to northeast Ohio was an exciting moment for him personally.”
• Silver said he thought the new CBA, with its emphasis on shorter contracts, has made free agency far more interesting.
• He said negotiations on a new national television deal are ongoing with the league’s existing partners (Disney/ABC/ESPN and Time Warner/TNT). He hinted another partner could be added to the mix.
• A group of minority owners for the Milwaukee Bucks was approved. No, Aaron Rodgers was not one of them, despite the rumors.
