With another Commissioner’s Cup championship game being played and the introduction of the NBA equivalent last month, cup competitions in the basketball world have entered the discourse in North American basketball again. With multiple seasons of the competition about to be complete, it makes sense to start thinking about ways it could be modified or improved in the future. Looking at features of other basketball cups around the world could provide inspiration for the future as it has to get to this place.
The number of teams competing in the final phase is one of the first points that is brought up for possible change, especially with the NBA announcing that eight teams advance instead of the two teams in the WNBA. In a season like this, fans were perhaps looking to lock in this matchup with a trophy on the line, but in seasons with more perceived parity, an expanded field to four might be more intriguing. The location is also something to be decided in the future with neutral sites and the team with the better record hosting being tried so far. Given the event feel, setting up a neutral site game seems like it could accomplish more than just handing out the trophy. With this year’s event, it is hard not to notice its proximity to the Basketball Hall of Fame induction and it might have been a good idea to schedule the game in Springfield in conjunction with the ceremony with the center of the basketball universe there during that time. Past years have had the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame induction during the season too so an arrangement with them to play the game in Knoxville would also seem reasonable as a celebration of the sport. There was so much fanfare over the exhibition game in Toronto that putting a competitive game there or some other potential expansion candidate city would generate even more energy.
The storyline surrounding the NBA’s new cup mirrors some of the nonsensical narratives surrounding the start of the Commissioner’s Cup. Both leagues seem completely reluctant to attribute any credit to the actual inspiration of their cups. League and teams executives have gone ridiculously further this time around, repeatedly claiming European soccer as the inspiration. Anyone with knowledge of basketball played in Europe knows that all of the basic elements of the formats of both cups can be found in the more popular cup formats there. Furthermore, the competition formats that are similar in soccer also exist in European basketball. While there are many different specific setups, most basketball cups can be categorized into several types.
Knockout Style Cups
Generally speaking, when sports fans around the world hear about a cup competition, they will be thinking about a knockout style competition, especially one in which teams from multiple leagues or competitions in the same country can enter. Even in the United States, there is a history of such competitions with the pandemic unfortunately ending the streak that started in 1914 of the men’s soccer U.S. Open Cup crowning a champion, ending its reign as the second longest annually operating national soccer cup behind the Irish Cup. Given that neither the WNBA nor the NBA adopted this format, there has been a lot of confusion about why that is the case. Not all basketball cups around the world follow this format, but there are some prominent examples.
The country with the highest level of basketball that has a knockout cup is France with separate competitions for the pro leagues, the top two tiers, and the leagues labeled amateur below them, though the top teams at those levels also pay players. Germany has a single knockout competition with teams from multiple tiers of leagues. Other countries that award a trophy based on single elimination that include teams in multiple leagues are the Czech Republic, Great Britain, Greece, Sweden, Portugal, Luxembourg, and Croatia. Israel has knockout cups, but the top division teams only participate in one for their league and Great Britain has another knockout cup for only the top division teams.
Much of the focus here is on European cups as those tend to be the most established and consistent so their formats are easy to compare. Japan does have the Empress’s Cup, which is certainly deserving of great recognition among basketball tournament around the world, having just been awarded for the 89th time this past December. Basketball there is more closely structured like the United States than places with large pyramids that have knockout cups like France and Germany. As a result, teams from a variety of competitions enter, including the top high school and college teams around the country, company teams, and the teams in the top pro league. Three of the fourteen pro league teams were knocked out by college teams in the last edition.
League Results Based Cups
The most common league format in Europe has teams playing a double round-robin with each half of the season being its own round-robin. That naturally leads to a halfway point in the season where the records of each team can be fairly compared at which point the teams that will participate in the cup can be determined. How many teams that is depends on the country as eight is a popular number used in places like Turkey, Spain, Italy, and Hungary. Poland has its top five teams qualify and then adds a sixth by including the team at the top of the standings in the second division after their first round-robin. Italy also has an eight team competition for their second tier in the same format, the only time that teams from different divisions play each other during their seasons. As is the case on men’s side in Europe, this is the more popular format among the strongest women’s basketball leagues on the continent and FIBA usually leaves a week in the continental competition calendar free to leave a logical time to hold the event.
Argentina also had a midseason tournament, the first time in the season that teams from both divisions played each other. Instead of playing all of the other teams in the regular season, teams play two separate double round-robins in their regional half. After one double round-robin, the top two teams in each division qualified for the Final 4, which had the team that won both games also qualifying for South American competition.
Other Formats
Some places have hybrid cup formats that incorporate multiple elements of typical cup formats. Turkey’s second division uses a format that used to be in place in the top division, starting with a group stage where its teams are randomly drawn, giving each team a minimum number of games before the top teams move on to a knockout round. Russia has a similar format, but teams from multiple divisions are included in the same competition. While results in previous seasons can help determine whether teams receive a bye for a round, the group stage and sometimes more in these formats are played before the league season.
Another popular cup format is the Super Cup, which features teams based on previous season results, often just a single game between teams that won two different competitions like a country’s league and cup. FIBA has this game for the winners of EuroLeague and EuroCup and it seems like a format that the WNBA might also want to explore to start their season. As with the Commissioner’s Cup, it would be an opportunity to put a competitive WNBA game in a city that does not have a team.
South Korea has an interesting competition that has been more formalized as a midseason tournament in recent seasons. All the professional league teams compete, but the event is specifically for young and bench players, which makes sense for them considering how large rosters are allowed to be. Those players get much more playing time with a full round-robin giving them five games to try to finish at the top of the standings.
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