With the success of the NBA Midseason Tournament, what are some possible areas for Xiao Hua to improve next?

Originally compiled from: The Athletic

作者：Mike Vorkunov

原标题：The NBA went for it with In-Season Tournament. Now what changes could be next?

First of all: I may be wrong about the mid-season game.

At first, I was skeptical about the event. Like every Facebook update a decade ago--- people still cared about Facebook back then--- I don't want anything new, even during a sleepy part of the NBA schedule. I look at the competition from the perspective of European football, where mid-season matches pit clubs against other clubs they almost never play against, whether they are from other countries or domestic leagues. The NBA didn't give us that opportunity – and couldn't have given us that opportunity – so how good is a game like this?

The answer is: very good, actually.

As everyone says, basketball is a great game. At least there's something at stake. Because of my fanaticism for football, I'm worried that the mid-season season will be different from the regular season games--- well, it's interesting that not everyone cares about European football and uses it as a standard.

If the benchmark before 2023 was the NBA games at the beginning of the season, which were hardly sensational and there were probably some stars missing, the situation is much better now. There's nothing worse for the NBA than fans and media treating these games as if they were the ones we watch every season. Basically, a turnaround is just a matter of maintaining the status quo.

This did not happen. The players clearly care. LeBron James cares. Tyrese Haliburton cares. At least a slight boost in ratings.

Nor can it be said to be a huge success. Ratings have risen, but not overwhelmingly. It's too early to call the midseason the new crown jewel of the NBA schedule. No one can tell us what it means to win the NBA Cup just yet, except that the league will put a bag on the front steps of every player and head coach when they come home from Las Vegas.

But it does look like a good first year. Even NBA officials are realizing that it will take some time for the new event to be legalized and gain meaning. On top of that, if the mid-season can hold out for a while, then the 2023 race seems to be a rehearsal.

In a sense, this is already a worthy attempt by the NBA. The in-season creates some of the NBA's monoculture moments by airing individual games on national television. This rarely happens outside of the playoffs. The league focused its national broadcasts on players and teams that were already well known, rather than trying to do so. This allows people to watch and follow Haliburton and capture his performances. So, in a sense, the competition was a success: it made a new star. The NBA always needs more players and moments like this to create them.

It will take some time to really know for sure whether the season has been a win or not. Any rush to judgment is grandstanding. The mildest view on the internet today is that let's wait a few more years and see what happens. Maybe it will become the real leitmotif of the NBA season, and fans will start to care and invest in the results of the game. Or, as it turned out a few years later, it didn't give the league the effect it had hoped for.

The alliance has set a final goal for this.

"Hopefully this will be a real pillar of our season," said Evan Wasch, executive vice president of NBA basketball strategy and analysis, this summer. "And bring tremendous value to the league in the years to come. ”

Basketball is already better, let's see how much revenue this can bring to the NBA. First of all, it will be determined through the next round of media rights deals. These agreements are likely to be reached this spring. The NBA's current television partners, TNT and ESPN, retain the games and finals of the inaugural Intraseason. But this event seems to be the perfect combination to sell to new bidders, or to bring in new partners. Maybe it's streaming networks that can put the entire tournament's content onto a subscription-based app and pay a handsome fee to the league.

If you haven't already, read last week's interview between Stratechery's Ben Thompson and MoffettNathanson's Michael Nathanson. They make it clear why the NBA, and all sports leagues, need events, not just inventory in the new media ecosystem. The regular season is a TV stockpile, while the midseason game is the NBA's attempt to create a new game.

The coalition is working on it. We'll see what happens next.

Still, the inseason could be a little better – I know NBA commissioner Adam Shaw says everyone is tired of that word – tweaking. All eyes will be on the pitch. Keep them, throw them away, I don't really know.

Here are some of my thoughts based on conversations with members of the media, fans, team administrators, and brainstorming.

Don't set up games on NFL days

Listen, the NFL is a monster. No matter how bad the game is, it attracts viewers and attention. It's as bad as the game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and the New England Patriots. Or even the Cincinnati Tigers and Jacksonville Jaguars games without Joe Burrow. The first night of the quarterfinals will be against Monday night football, and the Los Angeles Lakers will face the New Orleans Pelicans on Thursday night of football in the semifinals. Perhaps the easiest way to boost viewership is not to force fans to choose between midseason games and their MyTEAM, the stakes and the inertia of professional football.

Keep the mid-season season one night a week

Midseason is trying to foster new Xi for NBA fans, while also attracting some new fans. Two nights a week is already a lot. Doing so may have a semblance of consistency, but it can also lead to confusion. I've talked to people who don't know that there are two nights a week that are mid-season.

At the same time, it also requires fans to watch more often and pay attention more often. Sometimes, more is better than less. Scheduling only one night of play a week, with a slightly less focused attention from the fans, should be good for the league as a whole. Make every Friday or Saturday a mid-season night. Create brand and consistency.

The first six to eight weekends of the season are used as group stages, and then the knockout rounds are played in the same format as this season. The Finals can be played before Christmas, preserving the league's sacred Christmas schedule while continuing to soak up sports oxygen during this sleepy week that has nothing but the embers of memorable college football bowl games and Major League Baseball's hot stoves.

Only the staff at the league know how difficult it is to do so from a scheduling standpoint. However, it would be interesting to see how the mid-season was greeted if everyone knew, for example, that every Friday night before the New Year was a mid-season night.

Increase player bonuses

Let me half-quote Justin Timberlake and put Facebook back into the mix. "Half a million dollars isn't cool, you know what's cool? A million dollars. "Did I delete the quote from The Social Network? Yes, exactly, but the gist is valid. In the United States, there is a long history: large audiences tune in to see if people can win huge prizes in one go. There's a reason why Millionaire became a ratings monster when it was launched. If someone just wants to watch smart people answer trivial questions, they can go on watching "The Edge of Danger," but instead millions of people tune in to see if Regis Philbin will change someone's life with a new fortune that night.

Increase your players' winnings, set them at a big, attractive round number, and market them so people come and watch. Maybe it won't have the same effect as the popular game shows of the past, since the participants are already millionaires, but isn't it worth innovating a bit and seeing if that's the case?

Maintain the point difference

Players and coaches complained about the point difference and its impact on the game. After decades of constantly hearing baseball players complain about breaking the unwritten rules of the sport, the NBA finally has a reason to join and show us that this league has some unwritten rules as well.

Adam Shaw said this weekend that the NBA may abandon the use of point differentials as a deciding factor because "if there's going to end up being a feeling, especially from our American fans, that it's some sort of unsportsmanship, then it's not a good idea for us to do that."

But this seems to miss the point. If one of the biggest motivations for this tournament is to make more regular season important, the point differential does just that. It's not just about the game, it's about every second, every minute. That's great!

Usually only gamblers care about winning or losing a team at the end of a game where the winner is scored, but now everyone has to care. Because if you don't, your team could be missing out on the opportunity to continue playing in the midseason that the NBA tells us is very important.

"It largely accomplished what we wanted it to achieve," Washh said of the spread on The Athletic's Tampering podcast last week. Don't let replay footage get in the way of good things. If the purpose of the mid-season is to develop new Xi, then this is just another Xi that everyone can adapt to.

Set up team rewards for the winners

Money is a nice reward for the winner of the season, but for the players, money is just an incentive. It can make LeBron James charge, but why should Lakers fans care more about that game? Increasing the stakes on the winning team will make more fans buy it.

What if Pacers and Lakers fans didn't just support their favorite team to win the NBA Cup — which is still a vague value — but also get an automatic playoff ticket or a draft pick? Eventually, the NBA decided to separate it. But this should be reconsidered.

Of course, both are worrying. It may seem like a bit too much for a winner to automatically qualify for the playoffs, and it could ruin the regular season, not only to the bad of the winning team, but also to the rest of the team. If a team qualifies for the playoffs in December, does that illustrate the importance of playing the full 82 games? Perhaps there is a middle way to guarantee at least one spot in the qualifiers in April, which could at least serve as a safety net for some of the best teams in the league in case of injuries or a big dip late in the season. Or for a team like the Pacers, that would lock in an important game in April, which hasn't happened in a while.

The idea of having the team fight for draft picks is also interesting. But that raises a tricky question: How high should the draft pick be? Would the No. 15 pick in the draft be too much of a reward? The Bucks paid $2.5 million for the No. 36 pick in June and a future second-round pick. The Lakers paid the Pacers $4.3 million to move up from No. 47 to No. 40.

So, how much is even a mid-first-round pick worth for an NBA team? Because that's basically what the NBA puts valuable prizes on the line. If the NBA says that the winner of the season will get the first pick of the second round, is such a title catchy enough?

Perhaps the correct answer is for the winning team to get the last pick of the first round. The NBA can still say that it offers a first-round pick, which makes some sense, even if it's actually one draft pick away from the first pick of the second round. The rewards are still quite valuable.

For a team like the Lakers, who rarely has a first-round pick in the future, this is a gold mine that could change the trajectory of the franchise's season more than a guaranteed play-in game. By attaching draft picks to games, the NBA can sell both hope and the importance of winning. It's a dual purpose, and it's rare for a team to get a chance to put in it at the same time.