DALLAS — Three games into the NBA Western Conference Finals, it’s been all Golden State. And now, there is a real possibility that the Mavs could be swept on their home court.
Little consolation, but if the Warriors sweep, it costs them
A Warriors win on Tuesday would also be a loss for them because a shorter playoff round deprives them of additional home games. And they are notorious big money-makers at home.
One sports writer calls it the Warriors post-season cash machine.
He estimates each home game in this round brings in $10 million to the Warriors box office — and that while most of it goes to the NBA — about a third of it stays with the team.
Two more home games in the Warriors’ house against the Mavs could add to the many reasons Forbes has ranked the Warriors the second most valuable NBA franchise and the sixth most valuable team in all of sports.
That is a lot higher than the Mavs. But that’s okay, if the Mavs can just grab the next four games in a row, the Warriors can have all that extra home game money… with time to count it while sitting out the finals.
Speaking of money and the playoffs…NBA playoff pool probably easily beats your office pool
The NBA has a playoff pool. It’s bigger than your average office pool where you make a $20 wager and win a couple hundred if you correctly predict the winner.
The NBA has set aside a "pool" of $17,317,334. The Mavs detail how this works. As teams advance through the playoffs, more of that pool money goes into each contender’s "bank."
Because the Mavs had the fourth best regular season record in the Western Conference, they got a nice playoff-bound deposit of $213,867 from the NBA pool. For being in the first round of the playoffs, another $258,449 was added to the Mavs total.
Onto the Western Conference semis, and another $307,520 in the Mavs account from the pool. And another infusion of $508,174 was earned by the Mavs when they made it to the Western Conference Finals.
The team says the players usually vote at the end of the season to decide on how to divide up the bounty. As it stands now, if they just split it between the 17 players, each Mav would get $75,765.29.
If they somehow are able to get past the Warriors, and into the NBA Finals, where they go on to win it all, each of those 17 players would instead get about $252,236 from the NBA playoff pool.
The rest of us may never think of our office pools the same again…
Mavs and Warriors on forefront of virtual money
Interesting thing about these two teams is that they both have big cryptocurrency partnerships. Mavs owner Mark Cuban is really invested — he was among the first to put his virtual money where his mouth is. For several years the team has accepted digital coins as payment for tickets and merch.
And this is serious commitment: Cuban has indicated before he doesn’t convert those coins into fiat (like actual dollars).
If you don’t cash in virtual coins, their value fluctuates. It can go way up or way down.
In fact, some of the coins that fans might’ve used to buy tickets and jerseys at the start of this season have plummeted in value. So, it’s good news for Cuban that he can afford to play the long game.
Which makes me wonder if this guy cashed in or held his coins. He’s the fan who made the halftime, half-court shot last October and won $100,000 worth of Bitcoin. If he didn’t convert it to cash, it’s now worth about half that.
But who knows what it’ll be someday. That’s the thing with crypto.