All I've seen on Twitter and Instagram is how stupid this tournament is. "Doing too much" seems to be the most popular comment.
However, I've seen a lot of ignorance (no offense) throughout social media about what this tournament actually will be. A lot of people are concerned about player health and safety, which is touching in a way. Some are saying that nobody will care about winning this "Governor's Cup" that occurs in the first half of the season.
Well, let's debunk some myths.
First off, the Governor's Cup (which is the unofficial name at this point) will be held entirely within the holds of the regular season, except for the championship game. The October and November games will count towards the Cup, and the top 8 records from Cup play will advance to the single elimination tournament. And yes, there will be a monetary prize for the players that participate in the single elimination round.
Since there will be basically no extra games, there will be little increase in health risks. Obviously, teams that make it further might opt to play their stars more minutes, but at most that would surmount to 30 extra minutes? Then they can sit out a few games the next weeks. Although, any injuries that happen in the extra Finals game might cause people to call down fire from heaven onto Adam Silver.
Next myth buster: actually, they're kind of right on this second one. I doubt anyone will care about winning the Governor's Cup, especially in the first few years. However, these will be the best 8 teams of an infant season. Why wouldn't the Celtics want to get revenge on the Warriors in the Cup Finals? The Cup should provide us with multiple marquee matchups early in the season.
There will be some sort of prize for the winner of the Governor's Cup, but I have a hard time believing that the NBA and NBPA will agree on a prize that isn't monetary. One of the potential awards that's been floated around in basketball media circles is the option of awarding the champion a first round pick between the lottery teams and playoff teams. The winning organization would be all for that, but I have a hard time believing that most of the players would want that. That would just be extra competition for most of them.
Lastly, the scheduling will be a bit complicated. The schedule would have to be fair in October and November so every team has the same schedule difficulty. When the single elimination starts, the top 8 teams will play each other while the other 22 carry on with the regular season. There's going to have to be some sort of segmented scheduling so every team plays the other teams an appropriate amount of times.
For instance, if the Celtics play the Warriors twice in November and then face them again in the single elimination, that's 3 regular season game against an opponent from the opposite conference when usually a team only plays the opposing conference teams twice.
What the NBA will probably do is release the schedule in multiple parts like they did in the 2020-21 season. For example, part 1 might be just Cup games, part 2 might be games between the Cup and the All Star break and Part 3 might be games from the All Star break to the conclusion of the regular season.
Or maybe they'll just make the schedule before the season and decide that they want the better teams playing each other more often. Maybe they'll decide that Celtics vs Warriors three times in a season is good for the sport. I would have to agree.
This tournament will just make the NBA season more entertaining without increasing player safety a significant amount. This tournament will remove one of the season's "dead" periods and add a week of fantastic basketball that really matters. And who knows, maybe in 15 years we'll view winning the Governor's Cup simply a step below winning the Larry O'Brien.
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