The NBA under Adam Silver has tried various gimmicks to spice up the regular season. The NBA Cup, the 65-game minimum requirement for individual awards, and the Play-In Tournament are just a few examples of this. “Rivals Week” might be the most contrived of them all.
The NBA has 11 matchups between January 20 and 24 that they’re calling “Rivals Week.” It’s difficult to come four or five good matchups that you could consider a rivalry. The amount of player movement makes it difficult for rivalries to build up organically. Most of the matchups that we think of as rivalries are actually just players that we want to see face up.