Some guy at the NBA’s headquarters started watching soccer last year. He saw the FA Cup and/or the Carabao Cup and said “fellas do I have an idea”. I’m guessing this unnamed employee watched the Carabao Cup because the in-season tournament is entering Carabao levels of stupid. That same NBA employee then learned about the Champions League, and in an orgasmic fit of profitability came to the office with a new plan. “Fellas what if we made the Champions League and the Carabao Cup into one, incestuous, beautiful smorgasbord of a tournament.” Adam Silver, Vampire Supreme, immediately ate that same employee and inherited his tournament ideas.
After watching the first games of the new in-season tournament, I can only assume that big hardwood sponsored the tournament. I have many problems with the in-season tournament. That first paragraph wasn’t a joke, I genuinely think that was how the conversations at the NBA went. And the games have been fun so far, but they’re just league games. The whole point of tournaments is adding a little bit of extra zap; they’re something you’re not supposed to get during the season. Right now, the in-season tournament is just regular season games with Bored Ape level blinding floors.
European In-Season Tournaments
On of my special niche interests, in terms of an American, is explaining European soccer to people who’s exposure is just the World Cup. European soccer as a whole acts incredibly differently than sports in America. The reason, probably, is the countries around us and America’s general size makes. But, nonetheless, European countries really like competing with each other. Also, European countries aren’t big on college sports; they stick their kids in sports academies. Creates amazing 16-year old players, but makes them incredibly dumb, like the time Jack Grealish did not recognize England on a map.
In European soccer, there are different levels of leagues. They’re effectively pyramids. The top level – like the Premier League or Spain’s La Liga – are the best leagues with the best players. So as you go down the pyramid there are more teams, but worse players. Kind of like baseball’s minor league system, but the top level teams aren’t affiliated with lower level teams. The US actually has a soccer pyramid (kind of), but I imagine like 97 percent of America cannot fathom a fuck about soccer outside of the Sportscenter Messi shots.
I’m going to use England as my base, mostly because I watch it the most. On the English pyramid there are something like 25 levels. For the sake of this blog we’re going to focus on the top 10. Of those top 10 levels, the professional leagues are the top 4: the Premier League, the Championship, League 1, and League 2. The rest are considered semi-pro or amateur. There are two in-season tournaments that affect these top 4. First is the EFL Cup, which only takes place between the professional leagues. The second is the FA Cup, which involves the top 10 levels of the pyramid.
I’m again focusing on the Carabao Cup, because most managers in the Premier League hate. It’s unofficially known as the Cowabunga Cup, because like the ninja turtles, it’s full of teens and one old guy on the pitch. It’s only important if you win it. Otherwise, it’s an annoying mid-season distraction that really doesn’t mean anything. There’s this thing called the Treble, where a team wins the Premier League, the Champions League, and the FA Cup. No one really gives a shit about the Quad.
I have to point out that the US actually has a soccer tournament. But because the pyramid is much more convoluted, and most people don’t care about US soccer I don’t want to use it as an example.
The Caribou Cup (another unofficial name) works really well for getting lower leagues involved (because they’re worse). The first round starts with all teams not in the Premier League. Then you sprinkle in the Premier League teams not involved in European competition in the second round. And then the big boys gets released in the third round. Knockout style until there’s a winner. Almost as simple as JR Smith.
Champions League
I’m going to do a quick diatribe about the Champions League, because group play is involved here (don’t tell the Phoenix Suns). The Champions League involves all the top leagues of Europe in every country. So, you have all the champions of Europe participating. There’s also second, third, and sometimes fourth place league finishers. There’s something called the coefficient that determines this, but like balking it’s all a vibe and doesn’t really matter. Also the theme is absolutely gorgeous.
Group play works somewhat like the NBA in-season tournament, except there’s a draw to determine the groups. Again, this doesn’t matter right now, but the main thing is there are four pots, and clubs are drawn from those pots to create groups of four.
Those groups play each other twice. The top two in points advance to the knockout stages, which are self explanatory. Here’s a cool goal from the Champions League final because you sat through all the soccer talk.
NBAlls
Why did I spend so much time explaining the rules of European soccer tournaments? To show some of the ways other professional leagues have made the in-season tournament format work. And to show how bad the format is here.
There are a lot of questionable decisions with the way this tournament works. Why are we just re-splitting groups into conferences? Maybe the thought process is that you don’t want the Knicks traveling to play the Clippers on a random Wednesday. But then, what the NBA should have done, is make the in-season tournament longer. Instead of ending on December 9, add some days in for teams to travel. And on that, why is the whole tournament like 2 months, six games into the season? This could have been a pre-season warmup tournament. Instead, teams are still trying to get things in order and they’re playing a season and a tournament.
And also what’s the point? In the other tournaments I talked about, the point is to open the pool up for teams who usually would never play each other. Not only are teams playing other teams that are in-season regulars, this is just another version of the playoffs. It’s like the NBA decided (at night because that’s when Adam Silver can be awake) why not make another playoffs? I mean, playoffs are already like 3 months long and bring in that sweet, sweet ABC ad revenue. Why not throw in some more?
It doesn’t make sense why this in-season tournament is something we needed to see. If the G League had been involved, I’d actually get it. But this is just another set of games that, ultimately, don’t really do anything. Sure, there’s money involved, but this is the NBA. Most players have reached monocle levels of wealth.
It’s fun to have an in-season tournament, but there needs to be some difference from the regular season. Right now, it’s just the regular season with extra steps and uglier floors. (They’re like the worst of City Connect jerseys). I just don’t get it. It’s seems phenomenally stupid right now.
December Madness
I’m guessing once the tournament finishes up in December I’ll write a blog about how to fix it. It’ll be interesting to see how the tournament plays out, and if coaches start to give it less thought once we get a bit farther into it.
It doesn’t seem like the organizers truly grasp what an in-season tournament is supposed to be. You’re supposed to see the possibility of Manchester City, the behemoth owned by a country, face off against Hashtag United (real team). It’s supposed to be like when Jacob DeGrom did a rehab stint against the Palm Beach Cardinals.
Soccer has pretty much perfected the tournament (don’t look at the next World Cup though). Just like a furry convention, there are a lot of kinks that need to be worked out here, though. It’s annoying, because the tournament has a lot of potential. I actually already have an idea how to make it better, and make it actually mean something to the players.
Basketball is the only other sport (maybe hockey but I genuinely don’t know enough about the sport) than soccer that an in-season tournament makes sense. Baseball actually has the most potential, but with how packed the schedule is I doubt we’ll ever see the Savannah Bananas topple the Minnesota Twins. I’d love to see this continued, but only if it’s not a pre-release of the playoffs.
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