By Duncan Cheng ‘25, Sports Staff Writer

Image Courtesy of the NBA

This season, the National Basketball Association (NBA) introduced its exciting new annual competition for all 30 teams in the league: The NBA Cup. This in-season tournament was a strategic response to fans who were complaining about the regular season being too lackluster.

The complaints about the NBA season have been prompted by one key reason. The regular season consists of 82 games per team played across seven months of the year. Yet, there is a period of dull games in the middle of the season in which there is no incentive to play hard since the games amount to little. For both fans and players, this new tournament is meant to bring some added excitement to the first half of the season. Similar to the international soccer leagues that have cup tournaments throughout their regular season, this tournament attempts to raise ratings and engagement during the period before Christmas. 

Discussions about a tournament like this have been circulating the league for years now. However, determining the specifics of a new system presented challenges. Firstly, the league did not want a new tournament to diminish the real goal of every team — winning the NBA title. Secondly, there could not be any additional burden on the already intense schedules. The NBA’s demanding schedules have already seen many of the star players taking games off due to injuries. Finally, the NBA did not want to disrupt any of the competitive aspects of the league that came with the traditional schedule, such as giving any time for injured players to come back. This meant that the tournament games had to be part of the regular season. There was also a matter of motivation: despite a cash prize of $500,000 and a trophy, the league acknowledged that it might not be sufficient motivation for players earning millions per season. However, for several lower-paid players, this serves as a good opportunity to win some extra money as well as prove themselves as reliable players. 

The NBA Cup kicks off with a group stage — all 30 teams split into six groups, three for the Eastern Conference and three for the Western Conference. Teams in each group will face each other once, which also counts as regular season games. The additional tiebreaker rules add some interesting dynamics. A tie will first be determined by a point differential system in the group stage. This means that in every game, each team will not only have to try to win, but they will also have to try to score as many points as possible. If both teams have the same point differential, the tie will be broken by the total points scored in the group stage. Eight teams will advance to the single elimination knockout rounds with six teams from each group and one wild card from each conference. From there, the final four teams will compete in Las Vegas for the semi-final round and, ultimately, the championship game in December. 

Only weeks after the in-season tournament, the tournament seemed to have worked in achieving its goals. The ratings surged, viewer engagement increased, and players have said that they feel more passion when playing in those games. ESPN has seen an impressive 55 percent increase in viewers compared to games at the same time last year. Within the Newark Academy community, fans expressed their enjoyment of the tournament. Some really liked the newfound intensity of the game, especially because of the point differential tie-breaker. Noah Gezahegn ‘25 says, “I am really enjoying the new addition of the NBA in-season Tournament. It has brought many exciting moments.” Many in the Newark Academy community will be eagerly waiting for the NBA championships and next year’s in-season tournament now.