Please God Let Adam Silver Be Serious About An NBA Version Of The FA Cup

NBA commissioner Adam Silver had the integrity to witness for himself the crime against sport that was the Knicks-Bucks game in London yesterday. While Brits probably didn't learn anything useful about our sports by watching the worst of what we have to offer, Silver might've taken something positive from them on the trip.

Silver has made noise in the past about a possible midseason tournament in some way modeled after England's FA Cup. (What is the FA Cup, you ask? The short version is it's a season-long single-elimination tournament that basically allows any soccer team in the country to enter, sometimes pitting the tiniest of local amateur teams against Premier League giants.) In this London presser, he goes into his fascination with the various competitions soccer teams play for every season, and his desire to hopefully bring something similar over here:

Like, do you understand how amazing this would be? We're always arguing whether the best college teams could compete against NBA squads, and with an FA Cup-style tourney, we'd finally get an answer. How about matching college teams with the best playground teams? How would streetball guys fare? And wouldn't Michael Jordan and Charles Oakley want to prove they still got it, staff up a collection of retired players, and see how far they could get? The possibilities are endless.

Of course, all of this is a longshot. Silver was probably both pandering to the British media by blowing smoke up their sport system's ass, as well as taking an easy opportunity to show American fans just how open-minded and innovative of a thinker he is. Even the first thought about the economics of it all shows how impossible it would be to convince all the interested parties that it was worth the trouble.

But c'mon. This is almost too perfect of an idea for it not to happen.