Welcome to NBA February, your new favorite month of the year.

The recently proposed NBA mid-season tournament is bringing out the creativity in many of us, including myself. So I figured I would lay out my thoughts on exactly how it could be structured to get the most entertainment out of it, making it exciting for the fans while also keeping the players motivated to take it as seriously as the rest of the season.

My idea combines, in my opinion, many of the best parts of other tournaments that already exist in the sports world:

1. The base structure of the FIFA World Cup
2. The weekend excitement of March Madness brackets
3. A points system taken right from the European football leagues

All of it takes place between the Super Bowl and NBA All-Star Weekend.

In order for this system to function ideally, the regular season would first need some important tweaking in order for it to conform:

• The typical win/loss records are replaced with a FIFA style points system, awarding a team three points for a win, zero points for a loss, and whereas soccer awards one point for a tie, in this case one point would be earned in an overtime loss.
• The regular season schedule would be reduced from 82 games to 76 games. Each team would still play every divisional opponent four times throughout the year.

This tournament actually begins in the offseason. Every September, the NBA will hold a televised group draw. Because, who wouldn’t want to tune in to this on some random Tuesday night right? This draw will work in a similar fashion to the FIFA World Cup draw, and establishes the matchups for group stage play.

There will be five groups, each consisting of six teams, one from each NBA division. Each group will play all of its designated games in one non-NBA host city (Las Vegas, St Louis, San Diego, Cincinnati, etc). Imagine buying tickets to a weekend in Vegas with a fifth of the NBA teams battling each other all on a neutral court.

Prior to the draw, the committee in charge will use the NBA preseason rankings to divide up all 30 teams into three ‘tiers’:

• Tier 1 is made up of the top five NBA teams in the rankings
• Tier 2 is made up of the next ten NBA teams (ranked 6-15)
• Tier 3 consists of the remaining 15 NBA teams (ranked 16-30)

Each tier 1 team will be drawn first, filling one spot in each of the five groups A-E. Then each tier 2 team will be drawn and placed in the corresponding groups. At this point, each group will consist of three NBA teams. A group is restricted from having more than one team from any NBA division. Finally, the teams from tier 3 will be drawn and will fill in the remaining spots in each group.

Example of a potential group based on the above rules

Tier	NBA Team	Points
1	Milwaukee Bucks	0
2	Toronto Raptors	0
2	San Antonio Spurs	0
3	Sacramento Kings	0
3	Atlanta Hawks	0
3	Minnesota Timberwolves	0

Group stage play will begin the Monday after the Super Bowl, and will be a round robin style schedule, where each team plays each of the other five teams once. Like March Madness, there will be a minimum of one day in between games for all teams (no back-to-backs), and therefore will take place over the course of about 11 days. A win earns the team three points, as well as one point for any overtime loss, as mentioned above. These will determine the group table standings, as well as be added to the team’s overall regular season standings.

The five group stage winners, along with the top three second place teams will all move on to the eight-team, single elimination knockout stage, with games taking place every other day for the next six days, dubbed “Final Eight Week.” Below is just an example of the what the bracket setup could be:

• Winner of Group A vs Winner of Group E
• Winner of Group B vs Group C,D, or E runner up
• Winner of Group C vs Group B,D, or E runner up
• Winner of Group D vs Group A,B, or C runner up

The knockout stage is the only point in the season where these remaining teams have a chance to play up to three extra games to earn more points to boost their overall standings. Every knockout stage win will earn another 3 points for the team.

Along with the extra points incentive, the winner of the knockout stage Final also earns:

• The Mid-Season Tournament trophy and a cash prize
• Home court advantage throughout the playoffs, should they make the playoffs at the end of the season

All-Star Weekend would need to be pushed back to the end of February to accommodate the number of days for the mid-season tournament. However, what this would do ultimately is eliminate any “lulls” in the sports world for the rest of us. The Super Bowl would immediately be followed by this, which would be followed by All-Star weekend, which would then put us into March and the absolute best month of NCAA basketball.

The decrease in regular season games would be made up by the games played during this multiple week tournament every February.

That’s it. Bye!