Third NBA The cup came and went with the championship game on Tuesday. New York Knicks joined That Milwaukee Bucks And Los Angeles Lakers like champions. The San Antonio Spurs nearly lost, but still managed to take home. more than 200,000 US dollars as runner-up. And now the season continues, with teams turning their attention back to the much more important pursuit of the June championship trophy rather than the December one.
While the NBA Cup will never have as much of an impact on teams and fans as the Larry O'Brien Trophy, the goal of this seasonal tournament was to create a secondary event that could inject enough early-season energy to at least give teams eliminated in May and June something else to compete for. Did the NBA Cup do it? Let's go through what works and what doesn't over the three years of this tournament.
What works: Elimination games
It's a lesson we learn and relearn every April as the NBA Tournament approaches. If you put NBA players in any kind of winner-take-all format, no matter who those players are, the results will generally be positive. Even without stakes weighing on championship aspirations at the end of the season, these elimination games produce drama year after year. Moreover, they do this for unexpected commands.
One of the defining features of the NBA Cup thus far has been its ability to serve as a launching pad for young teams. The Pacers came out of nowhere to reach the Cup game in 2023, but then made back-to-back postseasons to the Eastern Conference Finals and NBA Finals. Last year Houston was the best team, but now Rockets are a contender for the championship. The latest example was San Antonio's win this season.
The best thing the NBA Cup does is take young teams with no playoff experience and give them a slightly toned down simulation of what playoff basketball is like. This gives them a strong reputation, which presumably then translates into the playoffs, and in the process it introduces more casual fans to teams they should expect to see a lot more of in the coming years. Regardless of what changes happen to the Cup in the coming years, this should be the essence of the event.
What doesn't work: Tournament structure
The way the tournament ended was overall positive. Everything leading up to this ending? Not so much. The group stage, no matter how it was set up, was overall a failure. Nothing about this feels like a familiar tournament structure for fans. Simply telling them that games count differently on different nights is not enough. It all seems arbitrary. Why are certain teams in certain groups? Why does point differential matter? There are answers to these questions. They don't reach out to the casual viewers the league is trying to attract.
At the very least, tournament games should be played consistently. Somehow, the league needs to set aside a portion of its calendar to fully dedicate to this event, because otherwise it would be too much to expect the average fan to know in advance which nights matter, especially since the situation is constantly changing. This year it was Fridays and Tuesdays and Wednesdays during Thanksgiving week. Previously it was Tuesdays and Fridays.
The real solution here is a knockout tournament. The problem is in the numbers. There are 30 teams in the NBA, and a full five-round elimination tournament would require 32. The league could get around this by byeing the two reigning NBA finalists in the first round, advancing 14 other teams and moving from there to a 16-team bracket, but since those games must count toward the regular season standings, everyone would likely have to play the same number of games. Perhaps bringing in foreign teams could work, but expansion is the simplest solution. In an ideal world, 32 teams would compete and losers' brackets would be created after each round. In the end, each team will be ranked between No. 1 and No. 32, with tournament berth being the only postseason tiebreaker.
Hey, speaking of postseason tiebreakers, it's completely absurd that the Cup champion doesn't get any benefit in the standings for winning the final game. Spurs And Knicks both are at the top of their conferences. They had to play an extra game on their schedule, which early tournament history suggests could hinder them in the coming weeks when they have to play important games. Not giving the winning team even an additional victory in the standings is frankly a farce. It is possible that the Cup winner will lose in a tiebreaker in April to a team with which he is not actually tied. If a team wins a game between opening night and the start of the postseason, that needs to be taken into account. How can you expect fans to take these games seriously if you don't even reward the winner with a win?
What works: money
Before the start of the tournament, a number of questions arose about motivation. How do we get players to care about us? Should winning teams get another draft pick? Guaranteed playoff slot? Nope. It turns out the NBA understood this from the very beginning. Players will play hard if they have a financial incentive to do so—for themselves and for their teammates. The level of effort and quality of basketball stands out even against a great regular season.
Even stars seem to be investing in winning amounts that don't even represent a full game test for them. Why? Because they realize that many of their teammates, especially rookies and two-way players, don't make that much money. This was the secret of these payments. They became a problem for team cohesion. Stars want to take care of their lesser-known teammates, and this benefits everyone even after the tournament ends.
What doesn't work: Venue
The idea of ​​ending the tournament in Las Vegas made some sense. This is an event city, after all, and the NBA knows it well thanks to Summer League. They needed flash memory for these latest games, but they also put an unrealistic burden on the fans to create it.
Fans didn't know whether their teams would make it to Vegas until Tuesday or Wednesday of last week. They played there on Saturday. It's a shorter journey than college basketball fans take from the Elite Eight to the Final Four, which are also much more important games that fans will be much more motivated to travel for.
And then the question of time arises. Christmas will come in nine days. Most people who are able to travel were already planning to do so elsewhere later this month. Asking them to figure out the logistics of an impromptu trip to Vegas under these conditions was always going to be a challenge. The atmosphere in the arena reflected this. The crowd, especially in the early matches on Saturday, was rather lifeless.
The NBA, to its credit, seems to have realized this. Next year the semi-finals will be held at home stadiums. It is reported that the future of the championship has not yet been decided, and it may also move to Vegas.
What works: Cup on the court
This tournament has one fairly simple aesthetic plus: the trophy works. It's different from the Larry O'Brien trophy and is so simple that it works as a design concept throughout the court. The center court logo obviously works, but adding it to the paint is a very nice touch that again helps these games stand out. This concept is worth preserving, although given the problems that have arisen in some of these courts, it appears that there is still a lot of work to be done when it comes to enforcement.
Images upon request
What doesn't work: Everything else about the courts
The colorful courts were missed. Even the lighter gold court in Vegas is a bit distracting. It was a great concept, but fans have certain aesthetic expectations when watching a basketball game, and a neon green or blood red court just doesn't meet them. They are more distracting than attractive. Next year, keep it simple. Save the trophy. Avoid flowers.
