Adam Silver continues to lobby for an in-season tournament built into the regular season that uses the European domestic cups as a model. Silver hopes the tournament can generate more interest in the NBA during its regular season calendar and also offer teams another trophy to win.

"In terms of the midseason tournament, I think since we last talked I've morphed to call it an in-season tournament as opposed to midseason, only because as we're looking at different models, it may not fall right smack center at the middle of the season," said Silver.

"But the notion is, I've said this before, trying to steal a page particularly from European soccer where they have other trophies that they play for. The ideal would be to take nothing whatsoever away from the Larry O'Brien trophy, our championship trophy, but in what is increasingly a long regular season, particularly with how people's habits change over time. Getting people to sit down for two-and-a-half hours to watch a game isn't necessarily consistent with the way people watch sports or any events these days. And to say 'Let's find some games in the regular season', probably still within the same footprint of what we're operating in now, so the season would start roughly around the same time, end around the same time, but then maybe convert some of those regular season games into what we call a midseason tournament and begin a new tradition. Something that players care about, teams care about. Something to win. Again, not the Larry O'Brien trophy, but yet something probably secondary to that. Something maybe you'd see players go into that extra gear for that competition."