LAS VEGAS — When Milwaukee Bucks star Giannis Antetokounmpo was asked Friday about the second edition of the NBA Cup and if he’d change anything about the event, he smiled.
“I don’t think there’s anything to change,” Antetokounmpo, whose Bucks lost in the semifinals last season in Las Vegas, said. “My room is nice. The arena here is nice. You guys [the assembled media] make it feel real.
“I overheard a couple players while we were walking in, and they said, ‘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, didn’t make it back to Las Vegas. The defending NBA champion Boston Celtics also failed to advance past group play. But with the tournament culminating Tuesday night with a matchup between MVP favorites Antetokounmpo and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, plenty of star power will be on display as the second NBA Cup champion is determined.
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“We’ve been really 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 players buy in and really compete for something during this early part of the season.”
That doesn’t mean the league’s in-season tournament is a finished product.
Heading into 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 executives of teams both in the tournament’s final four and around the league — on 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 following last year’s inaugural NBA Cup was adjusting the knockout round schedule. Last season, the entire process was completed in six days:
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Quarterfinals at home sites Monday and Tuesday
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Semifinals in Las Vegas Thursday
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Championship game in Las Vegas Saturday
As a result, last year the Bucks arrived in Las Vegas early Wednesday morning, then played the early afternoon game Thursday 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 shifts in the schedule, pushing it out to eight total days:
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Quarterfinals at home sites Tuesday and Wednesday
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Semifinals in Las Vegas Saturday
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Championship game in Las Vegas Tuesday
The change has been welcomed by everyone involved, as it has allowed teams to catch their breath, fully prepare for the elimination games and avoid the tough turnaround Milwaukee faced last year. It also produced two spirited, competitive games in Saturday’s semis and plenty of dramatic moments in the quarters.
But fitting the tournament into the existing schedule will continue to present plenty of challenges. In a span of 10 days, the NBA will have one day with no games, two other days with a single game and three others with just two games. All were necessary to allow the NBA Cup to be highlighted but do the league no favors in reducing back-to-backs in the schedule. “It makes the schedule really wonky for this week,” a Western Conference executive said.
However, all four quarterfinals and both semifinals produced exciting and close games, drawing the kind of attention to the early part of the league’s schedule that normally skews toward the NFL and college football.
“It’s gotten its desired outcome,” the executive said. “There’s more to these games than just any old game.
“You heard [Steve] Kerr’s comments after [Golden State’s quarterfinal loss]. They were pissed. They wanted to be there.”
Neutral-site games remain a work in progress
Tuesday night’s final will show just how much moving the final from Saturday to Tuesday will impact both attendance and television ratings (though not having the Lakers involved also will likely affect both).
Despite the competitiveness of Saturday’s semifinals, the atmosphere inside T-Mobile Arena was tepid. The crowds for both games were in line with what the league got last year: a slight bump from 16,837 to 17,113 for the first game, and a slight drop from 18,017 (a sellout) for the second semifinal (featuring the Lakers) to 17,937.
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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 out here supporting us. Wish we could have won for them.”
Still, the games clearly lacked the energy of a home game, a marked contrast to the atmosphere in the Cup quarterfinals. Last year, the NBA benefited from the Lakers — with the league’s biggest fan base just a four-hour drive away — winning the inaugural Cup. So far, this year’s tournament has showcased the challenges of playing games in a neutral environment, no matter 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 sites, then having the championship game in Vegas. That’s similar to how the UEFA Champions League in soccer and other cup-style tournaments are played. And it would undoubtedly create a better atmosphere for the games.
The counterargument is it would remove the carrot of a trip to Las Vegas in the middle of the season from two of the four teams that make the trip now. Perhaps more importantly, it also would require teams to leave more arena dates open to host games, a significant hurdle to overcome for many franchises with multiuse arenas.
One change, however, is definitely coming to the NBA Cup: its next television home.
After TNT and ESPN split hosting duties over the first two seasons, Amazon will take over for the quarterfinals, semifinals and the 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.
That includes moving the tournament a bit deeper into the regular season. But those same sources cautioned that any such discussions were preliminary, and that it was far from likely any changes would be implemented next season.
A later-season finish would allow for another tweak multiple 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 West’s top five reached the knockout rounds. This year, the East’s top two teams — the Cleveland Cavaliers and Celtics — missed out.
“If you play eight group games,” said another West executive, “the Celtics wind up in [the knockout rounds].”
The NBA showed its willingness to adjust on the fly by making immediate changes to the knockout round schedule after last season’s inaugural event. And although the league is happy with how the tournament is progressing as part of the calendar, it’s clear the NBA Cup will continue to evolve.
“In terms of changes for future years, we’re always going to be looking at ways to improve the experience for our teams, players, fans and partners,” Wasch said. “So while there’s nothing I can say is definitely coming, it’s always something we’re looking at fine-tuning.”
