Before the NBA Cup finals tipped off Tuesday, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver was honest about the future of the event in Las Vegas during an appearance on the NBA on Prime pregame show.
“We’re talking with Amazon Prime about whether it makes sense to maybe go to some unique locations for the final game. They have suggested, for example, some like storied college arenas. We’re just looking at other ways we could do this.”
Duke’s Cameron Indoor Stadium is “among strong options” under consideration to host next year’s event, ESPN’s Shams Charania reports.
The league’s contract with T-Mobile Arena to host the Cup Finals is year-to-year, so there is no hurdle to moving the game.
However, one key challenge in moving the event to Durham and the Cameron Indoor — or to Allen Fieldhouse in Kansas, or Michigan State’s Breslin Center in Lansing, or any other college setting — is that the NBA Cup title game lands just as the students that make those venues special are headed home for the holidays (or, the game falls during finals week for the students). Also, some of these arenas are much smaller than the average NBA arena; for example, Cameron Indoor Stadium has a capacity of just 9,314.
The topic of the lack of buzz in Las Vegas around the NBA Cup and the lack of energy in the building has been ongoing for a couple of years, and Amazon Prime has a big stake in making the Cup work — a large part of its massive NBA broadcast package was based around the rights to Cup games. The NBA had already announced that next year the semifinals would move to home-market arenas (for example, this year the Thunder would have hosted the Spurs and the Magic would have hosted the Knicks). While there was good energy at T-Mobile Arena for this year’s Cup Finals — Knicks fans will travel, and there are Victor Wembanyama fans everywhere — Prime and the NBA are looking for something more.
In addition to college settings, there had also been speculation about moving the NBA Cup Finals to other non-NBA markets, such as Seattle, Louisville, or Columbus. But just dropping one NBA game in those cities will not necessarily bring the energy the NBA and Prime are seeking.
The NBA Cup has been a success on many fronts. The hard-core NBA fan base has embraced it. It has given more meaning to some early-season games and gotten some more casual fans talking about the NBA before Christmas. The games have motivated players (the $530,000 per player on the winning team will do that). It’s worked, but Amazon and the NBA think it can be much more.
Will playing games on a college campus further that goal?
