basketball
Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
knock-out competition held between professional, semi-professional and amateur teams from the various divisions of the National Basketball League. For most of the competition's history, the draw has featured the elite of English basketball, but teams from the
British Basketball League
The British Basketball League (BBL) is a men's professional basketball league in Great Britain and represents the highest level of play in the countries. The league is contested by 10 teams from England and Scotland. There are no clubs howeve ...
currently do not compete in the National Cup, as they compete in their own separate competition, the
BBL Cup
The British Basketball League Cup, often shortened to the BBL Cup, is an annual cup competition for British basketball teams organised by the United Kingdom's top professional league, the British Basketball League. It is one of two peripheral c ...
.
The final is usually played midway through the season, at a neutral venue. The winners of the tournament are awarded the George Williams Trophy, which is named for the man who donated the original cup.
History
The competition was originally launched as the A.B.B.A. National Championship in 1936, and was the first attempt by the Amateur Basketball Ball Association (A.B.B.A.) to develop an annual national basketball championship in England and Wales. The National Championship was initially structured as an end-of-season event to allow regional champions to compete against their peers from across England and Wales. It was governed by the Amateur Basket Ball Association (A.B.B.A.), a forerunner of the current
Basketball England
Basketball England (BE, formally ''England Basketball'')National Basketball League (NBL) in 1972, the cup began a gradual decline in its influence on the English game as alternative national competitions became more established. The introduction of the NBL's own end-of-season playoffs in 1979 resulted in the competition being restructured into a season-long knockout tournament similar to football's
FA Cup
The Football Association Challenge Cup, more commonly known as the FA Cup, is an annual knockout football competition in men's domestic English football. First played during the 1871–72 season, it is the oldest national football competi ...
, with the competition renamed the National Cup to avoid confusion with the league championship. This structure continued through the introduction of the independent, franchise-based
British Basketball League
The British Basketball League (BBL) is a men's professional basketball league in Great Britain and represents the highest level of play in the countries. The league is contested by 10 teams from England and Scotland. There are no clubs howeve ...
in 1987, though the cup was eventually truncated to a 16-team event for 1998 onwards, with the clubs holding a BBL franchise being joined by the top teams from the previous year's NBL Division 1 standings. This change in format came at the same time as the BBC began showing live coverage of the semi-finals and final.
In 2003, the governance and competition structure of basketball in England underwent a period of reinvention, which included rebranding the NBL as the English Basketball League and introducing new rules governing the use of import players across all
Basketball England
Basketball England (BE, formally ''England Basketball'')British Basketball League
The British Basketball League (BBL) is a men's professional basketball league in Great Britain and represents the highest level of play in the countries. The league is contested by 10 teams from England and Scotland. There are no clubs howeve ...
, which withdrew the support of all top-flight clubs and started their own breakaway competition. The withdrawal of the top-flight clubs led to the National Cup returning to a more open structure, with teams able to enter from all divisions of the NBL. This format largely remains to this day, with small variations in organisation during the early rounds.
Format
The current competition structure is a
knockout tournament
A knockout (abbreviated to KO or K.O.) is a fight-ending, winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, mixed martial arts, karate, some forms of taekwondo and other sports involving striking, a ...
with pairings drawn completely at random – there are no seeds, with the draw for all the rounds up to and including the quarter-final taking place in May.
When there are an uneven number of clubs in the draw, some pre-selected teams will receive
byes In cricket, a bye is a type of extra. It is a run scored by the batting team when the ball has not been hit by the batter and the ball has not hit the batter's body.
Scoring byes
Usually, if the ball passes the batter without being deflected, th ...
into the next round. In some seasons the number of entries has required a preliminary round.