The first game of the new NBA In-Season Tournament took place last Friday and saw excellent performances from Donovan Mitchell, Luka Doncic and former MVP (Most Valuable Player) Nikola Jokic. But what is the In-Season Tournament?
The format
The NBA In-Season Tournament started on Friday, November 3 and will run through until Saturday, December 9 where the final will take place in Las Vegas. This tournament will be made up of two stages: group play and the knockout rounds.
Teams from each Conference, East and West, were divided into three groups of five. These teams will all play each other once in a round-robin style and will see the team with the best record in the group move on to the quarter-finals. A fourth wild card team from each Conference will also progress. These games will also count for the regular-season records and league standings as well as the group table. These are not additional games as they are part of the 82 regular season games, it is just a way to split up the long, everlasting regular season and add an incentive for players to play all year round.
The eight teams that have advanced will play in knockout rounds, much like the play-offs but just one game in this tournament unlike the best of seven styles in the play-offs. The winners from this round will go through to the semi-finals, which is also in Las Vegas, on December 7. The final will follow, like mentioned, on December 9.
Both the quarter and semi-final games count to the regular season records of these teams and the league standings. The final however will not.
The prize money
Players on the winning team will get the opportunity to be the first in history to lift the cup but will also win money. Players from the winning team will each receive $500,000 (£409,000) with the runners up receiving $200,000 (£164,000) each. Third and fourth place players will both receive $100,000 (£81,000) and players that lose in the quarter finals, fifth place through to eighth place, will receive $50,000 (£41,000).
There will also be an In-Season Tournament MVP and an All-tournament First Team.
Teams that don’t go through to the knockout rounds will play two games against each other on December 6 and 8.
Now, who is going to win this thing?
Although this tournament aims to encourage star players to take part in more games than usual, I don’t see this happening.
So that makes me think that this tournament will be won by a team that doesn’t quite have that star power to win the Finals but are still a solid team and will really challenge for the championship in a few years’ time.
I believe that either the Oklahoma City Thunder or the San Antonio Spurs will win the In-Season Tournament.
OKC have a young squad with a few players, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander and Josh Giddey, starting to pull through and become real star players in the league.
The Spurs, although I may be a tad biased, have the most exciting team in the NBA today and it would be great for the young squad to pick up a trophy early to push on for a championship in the future.
By Jamie O’Sullivan
