NBA Cup, interview with vice president Wasch: “Parquet, international teams: behind the scenes”

Milwaukee-Oklahoma City, over to you. In Las Vegas the NBA celebrates the last act of its cup, a challenge between the Bucks and Thunder which will conclude the second edition. A successful tournament, like the first, which confirmed how the most famous basketball league in the world has the ability to innovate and renew itself without losing its uniqueness, even when it borrows ideas from international football and basketball as in this case. Not very NBA ideas. Evan Wasch, executive vice president in charge of basketball strategy and analytics, who played a role in the birth of this tournament, knows this well and spoke about it in an Italian exclusive to the Gazzetta dello Sport.

Mr Wasch, how did the NBA Cup come about?

“The first reflections date back to 10-15 years ago, then speaking at league level, with our players and our fans we understood that there was the possibility of growing our league by adding a trophy. We have a long regular season and then long playoffs that crown a winner. Only one. However, around us we have many models, from football to international basketball, to individual sports such as tennis and golf, in which those who participate do not compete for just one trophy. We perceived this tournament as an opportunity to exploit, not as a necessity but something that would allow us to grow, especially adding it at the beginning of the season.”

How did we arrive at this format?

“After endless discussions and endless tests. We started by thinking about all the possible ways to hold a tournament of this type. The first was a direct elimination tournament, and to reach 32 teams we thought of involving two international teams to add to our 30. Then we decided that we wanted to have a group stage and we arrived at the current format, a compromise between needs different.”

“The first was that we wanted a tournament where every match was important, so we needed something that wasn’t too long or spread over too many months: we therefore decided that we would have a short group stage and not an immediate knockout tournament. The second need was that we wanted to create something within our regular season, without adding more games. And in fact, in our NBA Cup, all games except the final count towards the regular season.”

And so you have decided on the groups and 8 teams promoted.

“Yes. By building an initial phase in groups we could build the calendar around them. The only unknown was the direct elimination matches and for this reason we kept 10 calendar days uncovered to integrate the regular season so that all the teams could play 82 of them. Starting immediately with the direct elimination would have been complicated: we could have decided the inaugural round first, but we would have had to redo the calendar after the first round. Instead, taking into account the desire to create meaning for all cup matches by inserting them into the regular season calendar, we opted for the current format that players and fans have appreciated.”

The NBA Cup is also the special parquet competition: why?

“When you create something new within what you already have, you need a way to differentiate these matches, to make it immediately clear that something different is happening. And there’s no doubt that this happens when you see those parquet floors. Last year we may have gone too far with the colors, but I think this year’s version is easier on the eyes. Both players and teams agree that the parquets are an important part of making it clear that the cup is being played, even if they don’t necessarily always agree with our design choices.”

The final will be played in Las Vegas, like last year. Are there any ideas of changes in the future, perhaps taking the NBA Cup abroad?

“We have no commitments to Las Vegas beyond this season. We have always said that for the NBA Cup we are open to different formats, to playing in different cities both in the US and abroad, to changing the format and perhaps bringing the semi-finals back to the arenas of the teams that play them. Being part of the regular season, however, if we go abroad we have to take into account the travel problem, because doing so adds fatigue to the players. When we make our teams travel, as will happen for example to San Antonio and Indiana in the two games in Paris in January, we build for them a cushion of rest days before and after. It would be difficult to do that for the cup too, unless of course we rethink the entire calendar.”