Adam Silver discusses possibility of NBA midseason tournament in Mexico City

The NBA finished up three international games this week, including one in London and two in Mexico City. For the Pacers and Nuggets, who traveled all the way to London, travel was difficult as both teams only played one game over the course of an entire week. For teams playing in Mexico City, they were able to easily travel to and from the game, making Mexico City, which already has a strong NBA fan base, a very desirable international destination for NBA basketball.

Both games in Mexico City this week drew large and excited crowds to watch a combination of the Dallas Mavericks, Phoenix Suns, and San Antonio Spurs play on Thursday and Saturday night. Naturally, Adam Silver was asked in a press conference Saturday if he was interested in starting a franchise in Mexico City. While Silver was not ready to commit to a franchise at this time, he did talk about the possibility of a midseason tournament.

“The next step before we start talking about a franchise in Mexico City is to bring more games here, and we have this two regular-season games and whether we bring additional regular-season games next season or do some sort of tournament with several teams playing each other, that is something that we are looking at”

As for the franchise, Silver did say it was something they would look at for the future.

This is the first time the NBA has played two games in one season in Mexico City. Saturday night’s game between the Spurs and Suns was a sellout crowd with 20,532 in attendance at Arena Ciudad de Mexico. That number made it the largest crowd to ever attend an NBA game in Mexico.