The NBA announced the In-Season Tournament Schedule on Tuesday, giving us our first glimpse at the schedule for the Sacramento Kings for the upcoming season. The full NBA schedule is expected to be released Thursday.
Sacramento’s Group Play Schedule will be as follows:
Friday Nov 10th vs Oklahoma City Thunder
Friday Nov 17th @ San Antonio Spurs, on ESPN
Friday Nov 24th @ Minnesota Timberwolves
Tuesday Nov 28th vs Golden State, on TNT
This means that before the rest of the season schedule is even announced, we know the Kings are scheduled for two National TV games.
Regarding the format of the In-Season Tournament, the Sacramento Kings are part of West Group C, which also includes the Golden State Warriors, Minnesota Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder, and San Antonio Spurs. The Kings will first play members of their group on designated nights as part of a Group Play round, and the top eight teams from Group Play will advance to Knockout Rounds to determine the winner of the In-Season Tournament.
We’ll see how the tournament actually goes. Hopefully it will be fun but it may take a few years for fans to fully grasp the mechanics of how it works and to feel invested in it.
Full NBA schedule is going to be released Thurs.
Sean Cunningham
@SeanCunningham
The NBA’s complete schedule for the 2023-24 season will be released on Thursday.
12:17 PM · Aug 15, 2023
Seems like an unnecessarily long time between games.
It’s my understanding that other regular season games will be happening in between these, but these specific games in November will count for the Group Stage.
This whole tournament thing just gets more and more absurd.
To me it’s basically a way to make rather meaningless and uninteresting games in the early to mid season seem more relevant, which in itself is an admission by the league that the season is just too long. I don’t know why they just don’t shorten the season and expand the playoffs. It would likely make them more money then this silly idea of an in season tournament.
Better yet, just expand to 32 and all 16 teams from each conference make the playoffs. I bet it would cut way back on tanking because the crappy teams won’t play near as many money making games as the good teams. There would be more of an incentive to win in order to make money.
One could argue that it doesn’t even make these games more relevant since winning the in season tournament is basically meaningless. There’s no real prize for winning. I have a hard time seeing anyone care about the in season tournament.
National TV games: Good.
In-season tourney:
Appreciate the info, but I’m not planning to invest any mental energy in figuring it all out or getting excited about it. Seems kinda silly. Tourney spread out during the season with other regular games? Yeah, OK. What’s the prize for winning? Can’t see how the players will care that much.
Every team has a few players on non-lucrative contracts, and I think that a tightknit group like the Kings might give a little extra push to put some more money in their teammates’ pockets. Not to mention, wins are wins.
Anyone know how they are going to determine the schedule as teams get eliminated and others move on? It seems like the league would have to reserve arenas on ton of nights across 30 cities for games that may not happen.
Also, it seem to me, since these games count as part of the 82 game season, that the teams the move on knockout rounds get more home games. I wonder how this affects season ticket owners. Seems awfully messy to figure out.
I’m guessing knockout games would also be regular season games. Would need to have a very specific regular season schedule to accommodate all that.
They do. Everything after the first round still counts as part of the 82 games, which also means that the games for those who didn’t make it to the second round couldn’t possibly be scheduled either. The only game that doesn’t count is the Final, which means two teams will play 83 games. It seems so wonky.
This is silly.
But happy for the National TV games!
NBA must be desperate for regular season viewership. Such a goofy gimmick.
Just give the players Tuesday through Monday off Thanksgiving week, and let everyone go home for a good meal, and college football. I’ve not been able to find the point of this contrivance.
I’m familiar with the cups played in European football so the in-season tourney idea is a pretty straightforward and proven one imo. Give it a couple years and a few tweaks, I think it could catch on pretty fast.
I like that it add more stakes to early season games. It also rewards teams with deeper rotations. We’ll get to see more diverse players and rotations playing basketball with stakes attached – awesome.
I don’t like how it counts toward regular season games/stats, though. Just have a separate tourney with separate counting stats, and don’t have some teams play 83 games while most play 82 – bizarre! Just make it it’s own thing, outside of the regular season. You could add incentives with cash prizes or winners getting tiebreakers in all playoff seedings or something.
But I’d wager the Kings to be favorites in such a tournament. I’d really expect our bench to outshine a lot of other units over extended minutes. And the high-octane offense has an opportunity to shock teams in single elimination fashion.
Cannot wait for the return of NBA basketball. Gonna be a great season. Go Kings!
Not sure how it would call for more diverse players and rotations. They’re just regular season games.
If teams are inclined to compete, as they are in European football, then it means high-intensity basketball which requires coaching staffs to rejigger their rotations to avoid burnout.
In the playoffs, you can get away with an 8-man rotation for a brief stretch that concludes with a long offseason rest. But with an in-season tournament, you would have to play a deeper rotation during the regular season games to keep the top of your roster fresh for tourney play.
I watch some European football, mostly the premier league
Honestly, I don’t care for Cups. The only thing that matters is winning your domestic league or at the very least do well enough to secure a spot for the Champions League.
I cringe and laugh when teams celebrate a Cup championship – like the FA Cup – like they have won a world title.
But if the basketball world had a Champions League of its own, that would be kinda cool, I guess.
Looks like we’re opening the season at Utah, and at home two days later against the Warriors.
Exciting!
Would be cool if they were playing for something of value, like a first round pick or something.
They did that for about 16 years. Never worked out very well.
Meh. The regular season is exciting when the team you root for plays exciting basketball. The kings do that, many other teams just Iso ball and it’s boring as hell (Sixers, Mavs, etc).
+1 on this in-season tournament being stupid AF.
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