The NBA takesphere and its audience is probably the only population happy with all these off days. I am not a Silver-hater but this is something Adam/NBA Minions have to fix going forward. Today should feature an NBA game and it doesn't. Not great, Bob.
My off-the-wall but Adam Silver-aligned concept for how to fix this:
- The European competition calendar ends right around the time of the conference finals
- There are a whole bunch of NBA teams eliminated from the playoffs who hadn't made summer plans yet because they'd hoped to still be competing
- The NBA has never been more global, and the level of competition in leagues beyond the NBA has never been better (look at all the top global talent getting trained elsewhere and making it to stardom in the NBA - Jokic, Giannis, Embiid, Gobert, Wembanyama, Doncic, the list is quite long at this point).
- Therefore, they should have some sort of exhibition series or international cup, played between good NBA teams who were eliminated from the playoffs, and the best foreign teams that can be found.
- EuroLeague level teams, plus clubs in Australia, Brazil, maybe eventually China and Japan, Most of whom would probably crawl over broken glass to get a chance to play against an NBA team and maybe get noticed or show off.
- I'd say try to get pre-commitments from teams as soon as the playoffs start, where they agree that they'll play 3-4 games over 6-7 days during the Finals or in the gap after early-finishing conference finals. Figure out how many teams are willing to field their teams for that, then adjust the competition accordingly. Working it out with the players union might get tricky, but if the players opt in (and
can opt out) and are incentivized appropriately, they'll figure it out. Much like how they figured out the IST.
Make it like a global version of the NIT. OK, so you won't win the Larry O'Brien trophy, but you can still be on national TV on nights when we're starved for basketball content, playing against teams who probably aren't anywhere near as good as you, but are super hungry for it and will be busting their asses accordingly and will probably win some games on occasion.
Maybe the US hosts it for the first few editions, but then we start alternating sides of the Atlantic every other year. Hey, Clippers, just in case you get eliminated this round, would you want to go then to Malaga Spain and play against some Euro teams, while spending off days on the beach? Let the crew ride again! Bring the family!