NBA instituting in-season tournament with ‘Final Four’ in Las Vegas next year: report

The NBA has reportedly set their new In-Season Final Four Tournament. 

ESPN reports the league’s newest schedule addition will be set for Dec. 7 and 9 in Las Vegas.

Also, any stats that are accumulated during that time will count toward players’ regular season totals except for the championship game. 

It’s long been rumored that this mid-season tournament was going to take place, but details of how the event would play out during a season weren’t revealed until recently. 

Yahoo Sports’ Ben Rohrbach recently broke down how it could play out, with the major piece being the league split into six different pools of five teams. Those pools will be composed of teams in the same conference. 

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During the first six weeks of the season, there will be designated days when teams will play group games — every team in their pool once — with two of them at home and two on the road. This will determine the winner of each pool, and that will spark a single-elimination format with two wildcard teams as well. 

How those wildcard teams are made is still up for discussion. 

Ultimately, Dec. 7 will be the semifinal of the tournament in Las Vegas, and Dec. 9 will be the championship game. 

Of course, there needs to be some incentive for players to really get active on the court for these games instead of treating them like any other regular season contest. 

There is reportedly a $500,000 reward for each player on the winning team. 

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In terms of scheduling, there will be just 80 games released for every team’s schedule to start the 2023-24 campaign. However, those that don’t reach the knockout stage will have two more games added to their schedule after. 

The two teams that reach the championship game will be playing a total 83 games for the season as well. 

It will be interesting to get players’ and coaches’ takes on this in-season tournament that resembles what many soccer leagues do overseas.