Reformation of the Reformation Or Why I do not care about the BBL Top4

On German Hoops we mainly reported in an objective way about what is going on in the German basketball scene. But usually blogs represent individual opinions and this time I have something to write about that is highly subjective and you might not agree with. It’s all about the BBL Top4 and why I am simply not interested in it since the competition has been reformed. I’m not trying to convince anybody. Guys like Goettingen’s Jason Boone really look forward to this competition as e.g. he never made it to the NCAA Final Four. But just let me explain why I refuse to watch this new Top4 tournament.

Last summer four important large-scale changes happened to German basketball. In my opinion there were two very positive changes in managerial questions and two negative ones concerning the sport itself.

Let’s start with the positive changes:

The 6-year deal with Beko as the league’s main sponsor was a great move. With the help of Murat Didin the BBL finally has a strong partner that pays a nice amount of money to the league and helps to professionalize basketball in Germany.

The other positive thing becomes more obvious for fans every week. German sports network DSF (now called Sport1) signed a 3-year deal with the league and broadcasts the game of the week on free TV (For further information check out the League Facts!). It is very important for the league to be on screen for everybody and not just for the hardcore fans on pay-TV.

So from an administrative perspective the league really made two big steps into the right direction. Unfortunately two questionable decisions in sports terms did not help.

The new ranking system was very confusing at times (check out Strange rankings and early hot-shots). Honoring the losing team with 1 and the winning team with 2 points does not work when games have to be postponed and teams have played a different number of games. This season there were some really odd moments. E.g. Bonn clinched the number 1 spot despite having lost a game or Giessen being in the play-off race without winning a single game! So sometimes the rankings looked as informative as if it was grouped in an alphabetical order.

Luckily the BBL decided to return to the old table-system for the upcoming season. That means the losing team will get 0:2 points and the winning one 2:0.

And then there is the new BBL Cup… Even though it is played in my hometown Frankfurt next week-end (10^th and 11^th of April) I decided not to attend the Top4. I am not even sure if I will watch it on television, because I don’t quite understand what this is all about and why it is still called a ‘Cup’.

The reformation of the BBL Cup has been something that seemed unavoidable as the old system did not really work out. The league’s decision to move the Top4 to Hamburg (a city without any pro basketball club) turned out to be disastrous as the number of attendance dropped down.

The BBL chose the easiest way and simply eliminated all ProA and ProB clubs from participating in their new cup. And not even all BBL clubs are given the chance to play the Cup anymore. Only the 6 top teams after the first round of the regular season are eligible to participate in the new BBL Cup now.

Unbelievably stupid is the decision to give the team that hosts the new cup a wildcard for the semi-finals. This season the Deutsche Bank Skyliners Frankfurt enter the tournament at the semi-finals stage what enables a club to win a title with just two wins! Besides some boring minor title like the Champions Cup (at the beginning of the season champion faces cup-winner to battle for that cup) I can’t think of any competition in any sports that gives a team an opportunity to capture a title with just two wins.

This simply ruins the value of a title – even more than the questionable new mode.

Taking the cue from competitions like the Spanish Copa Del Rey the Cup loses its status as a competition that stands for itself. To me that ruins the basic idea of a cup. I think not the record of the season should decide your role in the cup. As a competition that stands for itself every team should be given the chance to participate in it. Otherwise it seems questionable what exactly this new cup is all about. Is it a half-time, mid-season championship as you qualify with a top 6 record? But why is the tournament played at the end of the season? Who wants to see some of the Top 6 teams of the mid-season compete against each other just some days before the play-offs get started?

To make it consequential this new cup, that is more of a minor championship after the first round of the regular season, should be played in the middle of the season. And it also is not very logical to make Alba Berlin, the top team of the first round play in Bamberg in the quarterfinals this season. Luka Pavicevic was right when he said that he cannot understand why the top team of the league does not get honored with homecourt advantage. I thought a decent record was all it is about now. So why punish a team that had the best record at that stage?

I’m not a nostalgist, who glorifies the old BBL Cup. A reformation was really necessary due to the fact that for some years the league did not care about this competition. It looked like all the BBL was just interested was the Top4 event, but not the tournament itself.

The old cup suffered reputation with games being played during the week, BBL top clubs joining the tournament too late (just at the final 16 stage) and underdogs being unable to defeat top teams due to the different foreigner restriction. I remember that during the 1999/2000 Top4 the Frankfurt Skyliners were allowed to play with just one import player due to the fact that their opponent Rhöndorf was a team from the second division that played with just one foreigner all season long.

I don’t exactly know when, but at some point this fact was simply ignored. Especially after the restriction of import player was more or less abolished in the first division in 2005 a fair competition in the Cup became simply impossible. How can a ProA or a ProB club that is obliged to play with 2 or 3 germans on the court at any time compete with richer BBL clubs that are allowed to play with an all-american team? This and the fact that top teams like Alba Berlin, Bamberg, Bonn or Oldenburg did not join the competition from the beginning on destroyed all that what makes Germany’s soccer cup competition so damn popular. I think this new Cup system is also not very transparent to people who are not involved into basketball. In Germany the soccer cup is so populat due to the fact that a team like Bayern München might show up in a little village to play against a team from the 4^th or 5^th league. No one would want to see a closed shop Cup in Soccer and I don’t want to see it in basketball either.

The new cup was justified with the lower number of attendance when ProA teams hosted BBL clubs. But come on, how can you motivate your fans to come to a game during the week when a loss against an all American BBL team is almost set in stone. That and the fact that only teams from the bottom of the BBL table participated at that early stage make those numbers reasonable. And don’t tell me you would not want to see Alba Berlin playing at Breitengüssbach, Langen or Lich… I’m sure that tickets for these games would be sold out!

I am a big supporter of the reformation of the reformation of the Cup!

So, you see I’m not just mourning about the reformation, but I also have some ideas how to make the BBL Cup more interesting.

As mentioned before: If the league does not want to let participate any ProA and ProB clubs the Tournament should be played in January or February like a real mid-season championship. Maybe this competition could switch its place with the All-Star game that could be played at the end of the regular season. I’m not a big fan of this scenario and a name change would be necessary too as this whole mid-season championship has nothing to do with a cup in a traditional sense. But it would be a lot more logical and reasonable than what has happened this season…

What would be my favorite solution for a new cup looks like this:

–> Let all BBL, ProA and ProB teams and the Regionalliga champions participate!

–> In the first round there should be pool of 64 teams (pre-round with ProB teams facing Regionalliga champions and the reigning BBL champion+the cup winner of the last season join in round 2!)

–> Make room for the games on week-ends! With 64 teams there would be 4 rounds before the Top4. That’s 4 week-ends where the regular season games of each league need to be postponed. If one starts with the Cup competition before the regular seasons are underway, there has to be room for just 3 week-ends during the season.

–> Equal chances for every team: Teams from a lower league get home court advantage!

–> Foreigner restriction: Adjusting to the rules the team from the lower league plays. E.g.: When a BBL club faces a ProB team the first division team has to play with three germans on the court at any time!

–> More points: Of course at first sight it sounds impossible to make BBL clubs play with three germans at any time. But if one would give the cup winner 20 instead of 10 points for the Euro Ranking teams were forced to take the competition much more serious.

If the 6-6 rule (6 import players, 6 domestic players) is valid in some years there should not be a big problem with that. Those teams who already work with a youth programm should benefit from this as well. And if the cup winner is awarded with so many points in the Euro Ranking the clubs need to sign german quality players! The reformation of the reformation could also help clubs to chose a path that supports the development of german talents. I’m sure that is something german national team head coach Dirk Bauermann should like to hear!

So as long as the BBL Cup is some closed shop, strange title scenario for privileged teams to participate and win it, I’m not really interested. I really could not care less about the competition if it remains the way it is played this season.

I hope that – just like it happened with the ranking-system – the league is willing to discuss the reformation of the reformation and make room for a fair and transparent BBL Cup.