The NBA is launching its new In-Season Tournament on the very same night that the world’s oldest knockout cup competition reaches the first-round stage.
And it is apt — after all, NBA commissioner Adam Silver has cited soccer as his inspiration for the tournament.
“This is a concept that has been rumbling around the league office for about 15 years,” Silver said when he unveiled details of the event. “It’s not a new concept in sports.
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“For those that particularly follow international soccer, it’s a long tradition of having in-season tournaments… so we thought, what a perfect opportunity for a global league like the NBA and it’s a perfect fit for our game.”
There’s one tournament that stands above all others for knockout competitions. For 153 years, the FA Cup has held a special place in the hearts of soccer fans. Life in towns and cities across England and Wales often grinds to a halt when their local teams have a big game.
It isn’t just the countries providing the competing teams who have fallen under the spell of the cup down the years, either. The Wembley final has long been broadcast live all over the world, well before televised sport had become an everyday part of life.
This explains why managerial greats such as Jurgen Klopp and Pep Guardiola, born and raised in Germany and Spain respectively, grew up watching the competition.
Sure, some of the sheen may have been taken off the famous old trophy in recent years, as England’s biggest clubs prioritise success in the much more lucrative Premier League or Champions League.
But the well-worn cliche about the ‘Magic of the Cup’ — a tag that can capture anything from a David-slaying-Goliath-style upset in the early rounds to a particularly memorable final — very much remains part of the UK’s sporting language.
By heading down the road of an ultimately sudden-death knockout competition that sits separate from the league, the NBA will be hoping to tap into some of the excitement that has characterised the FA Cup since its inception in 1871.
Some of Friday’s opening night fixtures — the Dallas Mavericks face the Denver Nuggets, as the New York Knicks visit the Milwaukee Bucks — belong in the marquee category and should ensure a spectacular launch.
Then it’s over to the players and coaches and how they approach a format that shares many traits with soccer’s major tournaments. It is similar to the World Cup or the Champions League as it employs a group stage to decide who goes through to the quarter-finals.
It should help that many leading players, such as Chicago Bulls guard Alex Caruso, are familiar with the format due to cheering on European soccer teams.
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Once the new In-Season Tournament reaches the last-eight stage, the fun should really begin.
There will be no ‘best of seven games’ type deciders offering second (and third) chances, as in the NBA play-offs. Nor will there be the safety net that exists for those competing in other sports such as the Wild Card Series of Major League Baseball’s play-offs, where a team can lose the first match but still progress by winning the next two.
Instead, the sense of jeopardy that only comes via a one-off, winner-takes-all match-up should create the necessary early season buzz to go with what will always be the pinnacle of basketball’s year when the top team is presented with the Larry O’Brien Championship Trophy in late June.
The NBA’s executive vice president of basketball strategy and analytics, Evan Wasch, spoke to Sky Sports in 2022 about the excitement an in-season tournament could bring — and namechecked the FA Cup.
“It is true that in a domestic soccer league, like England or Spain with an FA Cup or a Copa del Rey, that includes teams from other tiers of that country’s soccer ecosystem but the later rounds are almost exclusively comprised of the top-tier teams and yet the fan engagement and team focus on those games is quite high, because they (offer) that single elimination play-off feel which those leagues don’t always have.
“Our focus is in creating something with an entirely different feel to it than an NBA play-off series, which is a seven-game dogfight. Sometimes we get those elimination games, but there are tactical matchup changes throughout the series — it’s much more of a chess match.
“We see an in-season tournament as a chance to create something a little more random, a little more democratised in terms of competition that could have an entirely different feel.”
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In time, it might be nice to see teams competing from the G League, which sits below the NBA but does not have promotion or relegation. After all, the FA Cup has 732 teams, both amateur and professional, entering this season. But by introducing a new trophy for the 30 elite teams to chase, the NBA has, at the very least, brought a welcome fresh element of competition.
Even now, just a few weeks into a regular season that will run to 82 games, certain teams will know the biggest prize is not on their radar in 2023-24. But silverware can still be theirs this year, courtesy of this addition to North America’s sporting calendar.
As for the big guns, a new prestigious ‘double’ is up for grabs, with there being something intrinsically appealing about chasing success on two fronts.
This is especially the case when the formats are as different as they are in soccer, where the knockout cups sit alongside the ultimate test of a team’s consistency — the league championship.
Since the English Football League was formed in 1888, the team collecting the most points at the end of the season has been crowned champions.
With every team playing each other twice in the EFL (and the Premier League since its formation in 1992), the league format is seen as a reliable marker of a team’s all-round ability levels. No one can fluke their way to a title success over 38 or 46 games.
It is why Manchester City, one of the greatest teams English football has ever seen, have won five of the last six Premier Leagues. Only the brave or foolish would bet against Guardiola’s team finishing top of the table again in May.
The FA Cup, however, is different. Not only is there a ‘luck of the draw’ element — the make-up of each tie is decided by numbers being picked out of a glass bowl at random — but also, the very nature of sport means a team can play way below their best in a one-and-done knockout game and still triumph.
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With clubs from the Premier League and Championship entering in the third round and then having just five stages to negotiate to reach the final at Wembley, this opens up the possibility of lesser teams either lifting the trophy or enjoying a long run in the competition.
Sheffield United, currently struggling horribly in the Premier League, made it to the semi-finals last season despite playing in the second tier of English football, while Wigan Athletic were relegated from the top division in the same season they won the FA Cup (2012-13).
For the lesser lights of the NBA, those teams who have to look way back into history for their glory days, the In-Season Tournament could be a godsend.
Certainly, the chances of beating, say, Golden State Warriors or the Denver Nuggets in a one-off knockout contest are a lot higher than over a multiple-game series. Imagine the panic, too, among the Warriors’ ranks as the clock ticks down and they are behind in a December 7 semi-final to one of those traditional strugglers.
Steph Curry and Co will have to be on form or else the exit beckons. They will also be aware of the prize money disappearing before their eyes. Each player on the winning team will take home $500,000 (£411,688); players on the second-place team will get $200,000 each; players on losing semi-final teams will get $100,000 each; and the losing quarter-finalists will earn $50,000 per player. This stands in contrast to the winning club of the FA Cup being given £2million ($2.43m). While players do tend to receive bonuses for winning the competition, the money from the Football Association is not directly distributed to them.
Back to the potential upset facing Curry and his team-mates. Not only will every Warriors fan be theoretically glued to the TV screen but also many of their biggest rivals, hoping to see one of the game’s greats humbled unexpectedly.
The FA Cup’s reputation has been built on such upsets. This might be in the final, such as when reigning Premier League champions Manchester City lost to Wigan at Wembley a decade ago.
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Or it might be in the first round, when this Friday night, tiny Horsham will try to shock Barnsley, a former Premier League club who play four divisions higher than their part-time opponents.
Chances are, Barnsley will prevail. Walsall are also likely to make the four divisions that separate them and opponents Sheppey United count in the night’s other first-round tie. But there’s simply no guarantee and that’s the beauty of knockout sport, as the NBA’s legion of fans are about to find out.
(Top photo: Getty Images)