NBA Rumors: In-Season Tournament Format, Pool Play Structure Revealed After New CBA

Nearly a decade in the making, the NBA's in-season tournament will make its debut for the 2023-24 season and we've finally got details on how things will play out.

Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo Sports received details on the tournament, which will feature teams split into six pools of five teams.

Those teams will then play four games within their respective pools (two at home, two on the road), with the winning team of each pool advancing to a single-elimination tournament. Two wild-card teams will be added to the single-elimination pool, though how those teams will be determined and all tiebreakers are yet to be decided.

All games played in the tournament besides the championship will count toward a team's regular-season total. The final will be an extra game for the two teams, and each player on the winning roster will be awarded $500,000.

As a result of the in-season tournament, the NBA will only schedule teams for 80 regular-season games and then add on an additional two for eliminated teams as the tournament continues.

NBA Commissioner Adam Silver has been pushing for an in-season tournament dating back to 2014, hoping to increase competition and interest in the league's lengthy regular season. The league and the NBPA agreed to implement the event next season after agreeing to a new seven-year collective bargaining agreement.

While the tournament has been Silver's pet project, he acknowledged last year that it might not instantly capture fan interest.

"I'll say I recognize that [if] we do that, it's not going to be an overnight success," Silver told Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports. "Because the obvious question, whether it's from the players or for the fans will be, 'What? Why should we think this is meaningful? Playing in-season tournaments?' My response is going to be, 'I get that.' But I think we can create new traditions, obviously, things change over time. And so that's something I'm very focused on right now."

There will be understandable questions on how to make the games meaningful for fans—the financial incentive is obvious for players—but the league is banking on a higher-intensity style of regular-season play enticing fans to tune in.