2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Elimination Stage Round of 64 (Part 3)

We continue postseason play in the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions as the clock has struck midnight for more than one Cinderella.

The series covered so far have all gone chalk, with many of them only lasting four or five games. The last batch though saw a lot of the top seeds play, and we have several more even matchups based on seeding yet to go.

As we've done in the first couple parts of this round, I'm grabbing four series chosen completely at random and simulating through the full series, making sure to save box scores and make note of some of the key players from each game.

The up to date bracket, scores, and results from Group Play can be found here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to it!

2025 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 4

The coalition returns to action in good shape as we enter our fourth week of picking NFL games against the spread!

A week after Adam went on an all-time heater, he regressed to the mean. Adam, Joe, and I all evenly split our disputed games with each other, which I think might also be a first in contest history.

Interestingly enough, the entire group almost all matched scores for Week 3, with the exception of Jim who finished just a game back of everyone this week. But the entire group remains above .500 through three weeks, with Adam holding onto his three game lead that he built on the back of the aforementioned heater.

You can view how we've all picked in relation to each other here. Consensus picks came back to earth a little bit this week, though we remain above .500 there. We're a combined 5-8 as a group on hero picks to date, which is probably about on par with where we usually end up. Adam, for his part, is 2-1 so far including a split last week.

As we look ahead to the new week, Adam and I disagree on seven games, Joe and I on six, and the two of them on five out of 16. Let's get to it!

2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Elimination Stage Round of 64 (Part 2)

So far chalk has prevailed. Let's see if that trend continues.

We're partway through the Round of 64 in the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions. This round will cut the field down to 32 and get us closer to finding the greatest NBA/ABA team of all time.

Our first set of series mostly ended fairly quickly, with the higher seeds needing just five games to win in three of the four series covered. The other was a full seven game donnybrook that went down to the wire in the winner-take-all contest. Hopefully this round will contain more of the latter than the former.

The up to date bracket, scores, and results from Group Play can be found here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to it!

2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Elimination Stage Round of 64 (Part 1)

Let's get postseason play started.

We have 880 games in the books and another several more yet to get to. The 88 teams we started with have been narrowed down to 64, with half of those to be eliminated in this next round.

For the purposes of these first few rounds, I'm going to randomly pick some matchups and simulate the full series. I'll go into a little bit of detail about each game and provide some of the key stat lines from players and teams. This will be a little more in-depth than Group Play since each post will have fewer games to cover.

The up to date bracket, scores, and results from Group Play can be found here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to it!

2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Elimination Stage Introduction

880 games are in the books. 88 teams entered. We've now cut that number to 64 as we're ready to move to the Elimination Stage of the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions!

This stage is heavily expanded since the last time I did this tournament; we're back to the size of the field from the original NBA Tournament of Champions. These teams are all now 24 wins away from ultimate glory.

Let's take a brief look at some of the numbers around the teams that have made it to this point.

• By League
• 5 ABA Champions
• 4 NBA Conference Champions (did not win their season's NBA championship)
• 55 NBA Champions
• By Decade
• 1950's: 0
• 1960's: 4
• 1970's: 12
• 1980's: 10
• 1990's: 11
• 2000's: 10
• 2010's: 10
• 2020's: 7
• By Previous Tournament Result (Quarterfinals or later)
• 2013, 2015 Champion ('96 Bulls)
• 2016 Champion ('85 Lakers)
• 2013 Runner Up ('05 Spurs)
• 2015 Runner Up ('91 Bulls)
• 2016 Runner Up ('97 Bulls)
• 2013 Semifinalists ('12, '13 Heat)
• 2015 Semifinalists ('86 Celtics)
• 2015, 2016 Semifinalists ('15 Warriors)
• 2016 Semifinalists ('02 Lakers)
• Previous Quarterfinalists ('71 Bucks, '72, '87, '88 Lakers, '92 Bulls)
• By Franchise
• Los Angeles Lakers: 12
• Boston Celtics: 10
• Chicago Bulls: 6
• Golden State Warriors: 4
• San Antonio Spurs: 4
• Detroit Pistons: 3
• Indiana Pacers: 3 (2 ABA Champions, 1 NBA Conference Champion)
• Miami Heat: 3
• Milwaukee Bucks: 2
• New York Nets: 2
• Philadelphia 76ers: 2
• Seattle SuperSonics/Oklahoma City Thunder: 2 (1 with Seattle, 1 with Oklahoma City)
• Cleveland Cavaliers: 1
• Dallas Mavericks: 1
• Denver Nuggets: 1
• Houston Rockets: 1
• New York Knicks: 1
• Portland Trail Blazers: 1
• Toronto Raptors: 1
• Utah Stars: 1 (ABA)
• Orlando Magic: 1 (Conference Champion)
• Phoenix Suns: 1 (Conference Champion)
• Utah Jazz: 1 (Conference Champion)

Obviously with this expanded field, we get a much larger sample of teams than we have in years past. In prior tournaments, 15 different NBA Champions made at least one run to the quarterfinals or deeper; all 15 advanced this year. We had nine new NBA Champions since the last time I ran this tournament; all nine advanced. To fill the field, I added five other conference champions who don't have an NBA title to their name; four of them advanced.

Meanwhile, there's a lot in the way of records from group play I want to get out of the way before we get into the seeding and bracketing.

• The worst possible record to get in Group Play and still make the Elimination Stage was 7-13.
• Four teams finished with that record; two of them made it in.
• The best possible record to finish with but still miss the Elimination Stage was 8-12.
• Seven teams finished with that record; five of them made it in.
• Any team that finished 9-11 or better made the Elimination Stage.

Unfortunately for the 1975 Kentucky Colonels and 1994 Houston Rockets, they went 8-12 in the wrong groups. The threshold for getting in ended up being about what I thought it was going to be going in.

From here, we move onto the seeding criteria for the Elimination Stage. I debated for a while about how to handle this, even contemplating a round robin before settling on a somewhat modified format based on finish in group play. Teams were sorted into one of the following tiers of seeds:

• Seeds 1-8: Group winners. These teams are, to borrow a term from Division III football, "top eight protected," meaning they are guaranteed to not have to face each other until at least the quarterfinals. By virtue of winning their groups, they are also guaranteed home court advantage up through the quarterfinals.
• Seeds 9-16: Group runners-up. Finishing second in their respective groups guarantees these teams home court advantage for the first two rounds of the Elimination Stage.
• Seeds 17-32: Group third and fourth place finishers. This was where I decided to change some things up. Finishing in the top four guaranteed you home court advantage in the Round of 64. However, finishing third in your group would not guarantee what was effectively a 3 seed in an eight-team bracket. Better finishes, following the tiebreaker rules used for group play, means that some teams that finished fourth in their group may be seeded ahead of third place teams from other groups.
• Seeds 33-64: All remaining qualifiers. Similar to the above tier, teams here were also seeded using the tiebreaker rules for group play, so teams that finished lower in one group may be seeded higher than teams from another group.
• Tiebreaker procedures among each tier, in order:
• Group Play Record
• Head to Head (for group standings only)
• Point Differential in Group Play
• Points Scored in Group Play
• Rematches from Group Play are allowed

And so without further ado, here is the bracket for the 2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions Elimination Stage.

2025 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 3

The coalition returns for Week 3 of picking NFL games, and we have some history to discuss.

I dug back through the archives, and I went back far. In Week 12 in 2018, I went 13-2 against the spread. For nearly seven years, that record has stood as the best single week mark in contest history.

I bring this up because, while I took four of seven disputed games from Joe, Adam swept his disputed games with both of us last week. This is not unheard of; we've had sweeps pop up from time to time in this contest. But were it not for Kaleb Johnson (my finger pointing) and "A A Ron" (Adam's) among others... Adam would have had the first perfect week in this column's history. Instead, he'll have to settle for the mark being at 15-1.

Needless to say, his historic performance has him catapulted into first place in the group, with me just three off his pace and seven games separating the entire group.

You can view how we've all picked in relation to each other here. It's a pretty small sample size of hero picks through two weeks, but we're picking at around our usual clip in those games. We're also in good shape on consensus picks through two weeks (with, again, that Seahawks-Steelers game being the only thing that stood between Adam and immortality).

And so as Adam attempts to follow up on the heater to end all heaters, he disagrees with Joe and I on six games, while Joe and I dispute four of the 16. Let's get to it!

2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: All Group Teams

Before we officially move onto the next stage of the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions... let's hand out some hardware.

Over the span of a couple months I simulated 880 games. That's a lot of manual score entry and trying to save box scores. And while there are a couple that I unfortunately missed, most of them are accounted for for this stage of the tournament. And with that, let's dig into those 880 games a little bit.

I wanted to make sure that we handed out some accolades for this portion of the tournament. You saw looking through all of the score reportings that I also went into the box scores and provided some of the statistics that went into the game. Every game's Player of the Game as determined by WhatIfSports got included, plus some bonus guys depending on clutch performances or other eye-popping numbers that I happened to catch.

As a way to honor those players, I went back through and charted all mentions from Group Play and named All-Group teams for each group. The criteria for getting named to this team was pretty simple: get mentioned the most, you make the team. I also went through and named a Group Most Valuable Player, though this one went more into the statistics as well as team performance to determine, as opposed to just Player of the Game mentions, though that also carries some weight.

Each group will have a First Team and a Second team, each consisting of eight players (attempting to balance by position as best as possible). Players who make the First Team will be eligible for the All Tournament Team when everything is said and done; I will have more details about that once the tournament is complete.

For now, congratulations to the following All Group players and Group MVP's.

2025 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 2

One week of NFL football is in the books, and the coalition returns for more!

We ended up with one more person in the group this year as my friend Tom also joined in last minute. He joined the group a couple years ago and is back at it this year with us, just on the picks side.

Meanwhile in the column, after talking all sorts of crap in our group chat Adam ended up with an okay start, though he is tied for last among the six of us at present. I took four of six disputed games from him and four of seven from Joe; Joe took four of seven from Adam in the first week. Despite my column lead, I currently trail the group by one as Jim is our early leader in the clubhouse.

You can view how we've all picked in relation to each other here. This is a continuation of the tracker I've used for the last several years originally built by Adam. This first week was pretty heavily tilted to 4-2 splits with games and no 3-3 even splits yet. Adam, Jim, and I have yet to go hero so far, with the other three guys splitting four hero picks in the opening week.

As we now look ahead to Week 2, Adam and I disagree on five games, Joe and I on seven, and the two of them on six out of 16. Let's get to it!

2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Group Play Round 22

And so for several teams, it all comes down to this.

Just 40 games remain in the group stage of the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions. For eight teams, their group stage is over; three of them are done for the tournament, while the other five have all locked up spots in the Elimination Stage. For 80 other teams, this round is their last change to either make the dance, affect their seeding, or for some, just play for some level of pride.

Of the 40 games left on the docket, only two are completely meaningless for the postseason. The remaining 38, at a minimum, are for positioning within groups, which could determine who gets home court advantage in the first round of the Elimination Stage. We also have two games between contenders for a 2nd seed, which would guarantee home court in the first two rounds. This accounts for half of the games this round.

By my count, we have 11 teams fighting for the final six spots in the tournament to be determined in this set. Nine games will determine those outcomes, including one win-or-go-home game. Meanwhile, only three of the eight groups have had their championships clinched; ten games will determine the fate of the other five, including one straight up title game. These include one game of overlap, so 18 of the 40 games have huge implications.

Standings, schedules, and scores for the tournament can be found here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to it!

2025 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 1

We interrupt your NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions... to bring you the longest running feature on Confessions of a Sportscaster.

The first full fall after I'd started COAS, I'd had the idea of picking NFL games against the spread. After a couple seasons of a partnership for that, I went somewhat solo in that every pick appears here, but it's never been something I've wanted to do alone. And so for the 14th season, I'll be picking games with a coalition.

Returning once again are good friends Adam Quinn and Joe Klecka. Adam won the column last year by a fairly narrow margin, ending my run of Even Year Magic. Just four games separated the three of us in total, and we all finished above .500. I can't complain.

So as we've done in years past, after ESPN announces its initial lines on Tuesday afternoons, the three of us will make our picks independently. Adam and I will provide a rationale, whether it be based on on-field observations, statistics, hatred of throwback uniforms, or the moon (no, really).

In addition to the three of us, we are once again joined by 2024 group champion and my co-host from Then There Were Two: A History of the World Series Geoffrey Clark, along with Joe's uncle Jim. My son Matthew opted out for this season despite having a pretty good 2024.

As we get back to it, Joe disagrees with Adam and I on seven games apiece, while Adam and I dispute six out of the first 16. Let's get back to it!

2025 NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions: Group Play Round 21

As the NBA/ABA Tournament of Champions nears the conclusion of this stage, eight teams will close out their 20 game slate. Many of them are either already advancing, though some are still fighting for some of the final spots in the bracket.

Another eight teams clinched berths in the Elimination Stage, leaving just 18 spots left to be claimed with two rounds left to go. 29 teams are still fighting for those spots, so for 11 squads these next two rounds will be the end of the line.

No group championships have been clinched yet, but a number of them will officially be up for grabs in this round, including a couple de-facto title games on the docket this go-around.

Standings, schedules, and scores for the tournament can be found here. All simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. Let's get to it!