This ridiculous group stage system is confusing me beyond belief, and zapping my enjoyment of the NBA Cup. Thankfully, I have thoughts to fix it.
The NBA Cup is getting on my nerves.
I’m totally in favor of the concept in theory — I spent a great many words defending it at the beginning of last season and thoroughly enjoyed Joe Mazzulla declaring war on Andre Drummond and intentionally fouling him to run up a 27-point victory to advance to the quarterfinals.
But I’m kind of over this whole group stage concept, which works better in soccer when scores are 3-1 instead of 138-129. I’m kind of over “the Celtics need to beat the Bulls by 16 and the Magic have to lose to the Pacers or beat them by less than 7 and/or the Knicks need to trade for Joel Embiid and the planets need to align in perfect parallax and we all have to sing ‘Rich Girl’ by Daryl Hall and John Oates in four-part harmony” for the Celtics to advance.
I’m kind of over 124 word Tim Bontemps tweets explaining the scenarios. I’m kind of over the Celtics’ broadcast team openly admitting they don’t know exactly what the Celtics need to win, and I kind of don’t blame them for it. Nobody can expect them to know that, because the Celtics are currently winning by nine, they need the Magic to win, the Bucks need to beat the Pistons by five or more OR the Pistons need to beat the Bucks by six or more. Like, come on.
The math checks out, but I’m flagging this for the sanity police to take a look at. The fact that the Celtics have some sliding scale of results for a Bucks-Pistons game is completely asinine, and I don’t understand why it can’t just be a knockout tournament.
Picture this: every team is placed in a 30-team, single elimination bracket, with the two NBA Finals teams from the previous year receiving byes. One game, midseason madness, since I have had it up to here with this group stage absurdity. It cannot be that hard to put some TBDs on the regular season schedule and fly teams out for the games, right?
This may sound like sour grapes, with the Celtics at the mercy of a completely absurd three-way barnyard explosion of outcomes that makes Steven Hawking’s theory of parallel universes seem relatively simple. But I legitimately think this will improve the product that is still new enough to significantly change.
To those who would say a fully single-elimination bracket would infringe on the sanctity of the playoffs, I’d say that is unnecessary fearmongering. Nobody in the English Premier League thinks the FA Cup holds a candle to the actual Premier League title, and it would make the tournament a billion times more exciting and a billion-and-one times more important.
This group stage feels like it was designed to make the tournament feel like it matters less, and I am of the opinion that the NBA should lean into the concept rather than handicapping it by confusing everyone. If the league wants fans to care about the NBA Cup, a fully single-elimination tournament is a way to go, no matter how logistically complex. But if they want fans to have the choice to care or not to care like they’re some sort of weird NBA-cup-based version of Hamlet, then sure, let’s keep it like this. I prefer the former.