The establishment of the mid-season NBA tournament from the 2023/24 financial year is on track. Wednesday evening, ESPN announced the dates for the Final Four of the tournament. Held in Las Vegas, the final phase will take place from December 7 to 9, with semi-finals on the 7th and a final on the 9th.
Note that the statistics and results of all games, except for the final, will be counted for the regular season. At the start of the season, in parallel with the regular season, the teams will be divided into six pools of five teams each, without these pools necessarily being modeled on the current divisions. These five teams will play each other once (each team will therefore play twice at home and twice away).
Then, the six teams that will win each group, plus two teams drafted, will advance to the knockout stage of the tournament.
The NBA Tournament Finals will not count towards the final tally
After these quarter-finals, the four teams will therefore meet in Las Vegas, and with the introduction of this tournament, the teams will start the season with an 80-match schedule.
The eight teams that will play the final phase of the tournament will play 82 matches, and the finalists will even reach 83 matches. Except that this 83rd match will therefore not count in the balance sheet of the regular season, while the twenty-two franchises which are not qualified for this tournament will be added two more matches!
Modeled on the European Football Cups, this competition will only have a financial interest: each player will receive a bonus of 500,000 dollars in the event of victory in this tournament.
