Denver Nuggets star guard Jamal Murray has spoken out against the rumors that the NBA is considering implementing a mid-season tournament during the regular season.
“Plz @nba stop with all these tournament talks,” he wrote via Twitter. “No need to make season complex.”
James Harden also criticized the idea when it was floated back in 2019 saying “are we in college?”
A potential mid-season tournament would follow a European soccer model and include eight teams for single-elimination games. Winning players would earn a $1 million prize incentive.
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NBA Commissioner Adam Silver spoke with Marc Stein about innovating in 2019: “It’s incumbent on me to constantly be looking at other organizations and seeing what it is we can do better and learn from them.”
“This is what Adam Silver wants for the NBA,” ESPN’s Brian Windhorst said on a recent episode of The Hoop Collective Podcast. “He wants it for the same reason he wanted a play-in tournament, is it adds intrigue, gives something else for teams to win, and most importantly it gives the league something else to sell.
“I don’t know if and when he can pull this off, but this is what he would like to have. He would like to reduce the number of regular-season games and in addition to the play-in tournament put this in and call it the Stern Cup.”
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