The NBA's latest move is a brilliant step on the league's path to world domination

• The NBA is introducing a new tournament that will take place during the regular season.
• Unlike other sports, the NBA is willing to experiment with radical changes for growth.
• As the NBA strives to attract more international fans, this will make the NBA look more like soccer.

While all sports want to grow in other parts of the world, the NBA is putting its product where its mouth is and doing everything it can to win over fans around the globe. 

The league's latest move to win over international fans is a new tournament that will take place during the regular season and culminate in a midseason trophy. As NBA commissioner Adam Silver told on ESPN, the competition should look familiar to the billions of soccer fans around the world.

"It's not a new concept in sports," Adam Silver said. "For those that follow, particularly international soccer, there's a long tradition of having in-season tournaments. So we thought, 'what a perfect opportunity for a global league like the NBA,' and it's a perfect fit for our game."

There are a lot of details to this tournament, but here are the basics:

• The In-Season Tournament (official name) will be played over five weeks beginning in early November.
• The games will count in the regular-season standings. 
• Group stage: All 30 teams were drawn into six groups, three for each conference. Each team will play four games, one against each of the other teams in their group.
• Knockout stage: The winners of the six groups plus two wild card teams will advance to an 8-team, single-elimination bracket. 
• An $18 million prize pool will be divided among the teams, with players on the winning team taking home an extra $500,000.
• The winner of the tournament will also take home a new trophy named the NBA Cup.

—SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) July 8, 2023

If the In-Season Tournament succeeds, it will provide the league with two big opportunities.

Here in the US, it could give the NBA a ratings boost early in the season when the NFL is in full swing and college football is marching towards their conference championship games. 

But more importantly to the sport's future, the NBA is taking a huge step toward attracting new overseas fans at a time when more and more of the NBA's biggest stars are not from North America — including the NBA's latest sensation, 19-year-old Victor Wembanyama from France.

But risks are involved, and the skeptics are already voicing their concerns. Teams' schedules will be less balanced, with the top teams advancing in the tournament, adding more "regular-season" games against other top teams. The new schedule will also force some teams to play more road games over the full season.

As Dan Woike of the LA Times noted, this will be a tough sell to the teams and fans.

"But consider what would happen if the Lakers were to win," Woike wrote. "For any organization with such a rich championship history, the NBA Cup would seem like just some gimmicky trinket. Imagine trying to hang a banner for that in the rafters. Another pitfall could be if a team such as the Clippers were to win. With no championships in its history, if the team were to treat the Cup with a banner, it would be easy ammunition for people looking to mock them."

If the tournament does flop, this will be a massive failure for the NBA in an effort to make games that meaningless games feel more important and attractive, and they will need other ways to appeal to international fans, a key to the continued growth of the NBA.

While American sports fans have been exposed to the NBA most of their lives, the bigger impact in growing the audience is overseas.

"When you look at China, India, and Africa, you've got about 60% of the world's population in those three places," NBA Deputy Commissioner Mark Tatum told USA TODAY. "So we're putting a lot of time and energy in how we become the No. 1 sport in those countries and those continents."

And while the NBA has exploded in popularity, particularly in China, there is still plenty of room for growth — especially in Europe, where many of the league's current stars have their roots. Growing the game abroad would be a massive boon for revenue: The NBA gets $2.7 billion per year from its American TV deals. Outside the US, that number is just $500 million. 

In other words, there is a lot of money riding on appealing to new fans overseas.