Adam Silver: NBA ‘jealous’ of Champions League

In his second year as NBA commissioner, Adam Silver admits casting a longing eye at European soccer and wishing his league could mimic it more.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver said Saturday that he watches the UEFA Champions League closely and envies the fans of the sport.

“The Champions League is a fantastic concept, one we are always looking at,” Silver told BBC Sport. “There is so much that happens in European soccer that I’m jealous of.”

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Silver last summer broached the subject of a European-soccer style addition to the NBA, suggesting a midseason tournament similar to those contested in domestic soccer leagues abroad.

“The competition committee talked about and seemed excited about potentially [running] some sort of midseason tournament,” Silver said in July, via SI.com. “[We are in the] very early days in the discussion of that, but we’re looking at other opportunities in the league to create excitement.

“As one of our general managers said at the meeting, there’s very few things that you can win in the NBA. When you think about European soccer, for example, they have the FA Cup and they have other tournaments throughout the season.”

The geography of the U.S. makes running an FA Cup sort of tournament the same way it is contested in England problematic.

In England’s Football Association, the Cup tournament is played at home stadiums and runs in conjunction with regular league schedules.

But considering there are 11 states that by themselves are larger than the entire United Kingdom, the logistics for such an affair become daunting.

Silver said Las Vegas could be “a terrific neutral site location” for a midseason tournament, however.

Using the English Premier League as an example, there are teams each season that qualify for the Champions League the next year and one team goes on to compete in a less prestigious continental competition called the Europa League.

Then there is the FA Cup, in which teams from all tiers of English soccer are eligible—there were 736 entrants in 2014-15. The English have another domestic cup, the League Cup, that is limited to the 92 members of the Premier League and Football League.

The FA Cup winner plays the Premier League champions for an award called the FA Community Shield—unless it’s the same team, in which case, the Premier League runners-up play for the shield.

But there is one key element that international soccer does not have—playoffs. The season is the season. The team with the best record at the end is the champion. Period. Done. No best-of-7 series lasting two months after the season ended

If the idea sounds crazy at first blush, it’s because it would be a radical departure. But it could also be fun, something the NBA season can lack in that post-All-Star, pre-playoffs period.

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