The NBA Cup starts in earnest this week. The tournament’s single-elimination quarterfinal round will play out on Tuesday (Magic-Bucks is the early game, Mavericks-Thunder the nightcap) and Wednesday (Hawks-Knicks, then Warriors-Rockets), with the winners of each matchup advancing to the semifinals to be played on Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. Finalists will stay in town and play in the championship game on December 17, a game that exists outside the bounds of the NBA’s 82-game regular season. It is basketball in oblivion, with a potential $500,000 cash prize for each player and a slice of cantaloupe at the end.
How did we get here?
… Do you really want to know?
OK, fine, I hope this helps:
The NBA Cup’s group stage hasn’t been altered from last year’s inaugural debut, and as such it remains a work in progress in a way that feels intentionally underbaked to anyone willing to give the premise the time of day. Like it was built to be wrong. There’s a psychology to it. We like things that are slightly repulsive. Coffee, tea, beer, wine, spirits—these are all things that aren’t inherently delicious on a naive palate, but that first bracing sip instills a strange curiosity. So you go for another. Then the drug kicks in, and taste, over time, aligns itself with the feeling. And you know what’s a good-ass drug? Win-or-go-home basketball.
Unfortunately, every element of the Cup’s format has seemingly been designed to be as repulsive as possible. The league’s official NBA Cup rules explainer is literally formatted like a terms-and-conditions agreement. Biweekly transmissions on Tuesday and Friday from TV announcers reading out potential scenarios track like morning announcements over a grade-school intercom—a time to tune out for players, coaches, and fans alike. “It's all too confusing,” Shai Gilgeous-Alexander said after clinching a quarterfinal berth last week. “Just win and we'll see where we end up."
The concept of point differential as a tool for determining advancement is hardly novel. But it does bank on a level of immersion that the league has yet to figure out—and it’s certainly easier to compute in the world of soccer, where points can be sorted with two-handed arithmetic. Still, there was something perversely riveting in watching the Magic, out of necessity, climb out of a 37-point hole against the Knicks at Madison Square Garden last week to advance into the quarterfinal, with the knowledge that they would be eliminated if they lost by more than 36 points. As with tanking, it’s fascinating to see how easily the terms of engagement can shift in a game of basketball, when the concept of winning is expanded or contracted. All it takes is the power of a different perspective.
In that sense, the tournament is a compelling conceit. Yes, there are plenty who see the entire thing as pointless adornment of meaningless regular-season games for the sake of artificially inflating the worth of the NBA’s early-season stretch. But sentiment can change quickly. That’s what we do. Humans are meaning machines—we create, extrapolate, minimize, and destroy. Professional athletes conjure meaning out of thin air to fuel their motivation. Fandom in all of its emotional investment can crystalize in an instant, inexplicably. The group stage can always be revised into something more palatable for fans and teams alike. But the group stage is just one part of the tournament. And the parts of a whole can’t exist as parts without acknowledging the whole itself.
The NBA Cup has staying power, and there’s already evidence of it as a worthwhile endeavor. Last season’s championship game was the most-watched non-Christmas regular-season game in nearly six years. The very first single-elimination quarterfinal game between the Pacers and Celtics prophesied last season’s Eastern Conference finals, and served as a star-making platform for Tyrese Haliburton, who recorded his first career triple-double in his first game televised on TNT. Being perceived for what you’re becoming is not nothing. It’s as meaningful as it gets.
And, frankly, this year’s quarterfinals slate kicks ass. Two recent postseason rematches. Four of the six best players in the NBA, per The Ringer’s Top 100 rankings. Of the eight remaining teams in the knockout rounds, five are in the top 10 in defensive rating (Oklahoma City, Houston, Orlando, Golden State, and Dallas), while Milwaukee, Atlanta, and New York all have game-changing individual defenders. These are competitive matchups with the personnel suited to exemplify the state of defense in 2024 and beyond. For a league that has been plagued by degenerative discourse of what the modern game isn’t, this year’s NBA Cup quarterfinal might have all the pieces for a perfect early-season showcase of what the modern game is.
But we all find meaning differently. With that in mind, here’s what each team left standing in the NBA Cup has to play for.
What It Means to the New York Knicks
Look, the vibes are good right now. The Knicks are scoring with terrifying ease, the likes of which its fan base has never seen. Karl-Anthony Towns—long one of the most talented players in the sport—has self-actualized, while Donte DiVincenzo has wilted in Minnesota after breaking away from the Villanova Voltron. OG Anunoby and Josh Hart are having career years. And Jalen Brunson is a legitimate top-10 player, as brutishly efficient as he’s ever been.
So forgive me for dwelling on Mikal Bridges, who is currently being held under Tom Thibodeau’s crucible. It’s been a wholly disappointing season for a player the Knicks traded a half-dozen first-round picks for, and Thibs seems intent on finding the outer limits of Bridges’s endurance. Honestly, I am, too. Two seasons ago, because of the quirks of playing on two different teams in a season due to a midseason trade, Bridges played in 83 of a possible 82 regular-season games. I’m rooting for the Knicks to make it to the championship game, if only for the chance to see Bridges become a sort of ultra-ironman, having multiple seasons of playing more than 82 regular-season games, even if that record comes with an asterisk. The final frontier for Bridges in his Thibodeau era? Perhaps an 82-game season playing at least 40 minutes per game, a feat that hasn’t happened since 2008.
Of course, this tournament’s significance might run a little bit deeper for New York than for other teams. The storied Knicks haven’t reached the conference finals since the turn of the century. The team’s last Finals appearance came and went before the theatrical releases of either Fight Club or Deuce Bigelow: Male Gigolo. It’s been more than 50 years since their last championship. This franchise has mortgaged its future with one of the boldest offseasons in recent memory for its best shot at a title in several generations. This is a link to a Knicks banner meme generator. There are plenty of jokes and jabs about the Cup’s actual worth, and even more made about the Knicks’ past two decades, but symbolism can count for a lot. At the very least, a Cup championship would be confirmation that the team is on the right track. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Right?
What It Means to the Atlanta Hawks
Exhibit A in how we create meaning for ourselves? Consider the thousands of Knicks fans at Madison Square Garden who will be mirthfully screaming “FUCK TRAE YOUNG” at the top of their lungs, and the appreciative smirk that’ll be on the point guard’s face all night. All born of a first-round series in 2021 that amounted to just about nothing in the grand scheme of the league. And yet, this matchup feels like an attraction—an unnecessary sequel that will nonetheless rake in money. The stage is set for Young to reprise his breakout villain role under the Garden’s iconic spotlight.
And what a time for it. Atlanta enters the fray as a sort of wild card, just inside the play-in morass in the East. Like their division mates in Orlando, the Hawks boast a below-average offense, but, unlike the Magic, are backed by only a middling defense. But they enter the quarterfinals as one of the hottest teams in the league, winners of six of their last seven games. Young is having one of the best seasons of his career even though it might not seem like it at first blush. Trae is having his worst shooting season ever, but has offset his plummeting efficiency by taking his role as a facilitator to new heights. He’s on pace to become the first player in 30 years to average more than 12 assists per game.
Last Friday’s topsy-turvy overtime win over the Lakers at home was the purest distillation of Young’s season to date: 31 points (on 36 percent shooting from the field), 20 assists, and only three turnovers—a stat line matched by only Luka Doncic, Mahmoud Abdul-Rauf, and Isiah Thomas across NBA history. Oh, and he won the game on a clutch 3-pointer. His flair and sense of the moment has always been present, even in the down years after reaching unsustainable heights in 2021. At last, another chance at stirring up drama on a national stage.
What It Means to the Dallas Mavericks
The Cup presents a little slice of the past for Luka Doncic, who cut his teeth as an adolescent pro in Liga ACB, the top-tier Spanish league that holds its own domestic intraleague tournament Copa del Rey in true reverence. Doncic won two Copas in his teenage years, and once told reporters he’d rather see his former team Real Madrid win the Copa del Rey in 2022 than win the NBA All-Star MVP trophy himself. If anyone can attest to how in-season tournaments can inspire competition, it’s Luka. “The NBA Cup is different,” he said recently. “I think the energy is different. ... It was fun.”
The Cup presents an opportunity for Dallas to put the league on notice: Last year’s ride to the Finals were no fluke—not with a top-three player in the galaxy and with a supporting cast that is not only holding up its end of the bargain, but actively raising Dallas’s ceiling. The Mavericks started their surge up the West standings this season without Doncic, leaning on the steady sorcery of Kyrie Irving and the breakout play of P.J. Washington, who has stepped up as a legitimate third option. Now, with Doncic back from a sprained right wrist, the Mavs have all the horses to solidify themselves as one of the two best teams out West.
What It Means to the Oklahoma City Thunder
Big man Jaylin Williams, who is playing on a non-guaranteed contract paying the second-lowest salary on the team, has been sidelined all season, but he has been texting everyone on the roster to take the NBA Cup seriously. J-Will wants his damn money. More than fair.
But head coach Mark Daigneault isn’t a fan of the whole Cup charade. Also fair. Daigneault, of course, has spent the past five years instilling a winning culture in a perennial bottom-feeder that has, over time, turned OKC into the most dominant team in the NBA. As with the entire front office, Daigneault always takes the long view.
“Imagine if it’s an NBA Cup game, and we’re up by 30, and I run a 35-minute player out there, and god forbid something happens because I’m chasing a point differential—that would be really bad for the league. And for the team,” Daigneault said after a 30-point win over the Jazz last week. “I don’t love the design, because it’s incentivizing that. Or running the score up on an opponent. There’s a certain grace that you win with. They’ve created an incentive that flips that on its head. I just know what it feels like to be in the games, and you’ve got the angel and the devil on your shoulder. But we’re going with the angel. We’re going to go with player health.”
What do the Thunder stand to gain by winning it all? Not much. What’s left to prove at this stage that they haven’t already shown? Gilgeous-Alexander is as consistent and efficient an offensive force as any MVP-tier guard who isn’t the greatest shooter who has ever lived. Jalen Williams has taken a monster year three leap, emerging as an unholy fusion of Suns-era Joe Johnson and OG Anunoby. Isaiah Hartenstein is exactly the boards vacuum that OKC hasn’t really had since Steven Adams’s departure. They’re currently outscoring opponents by 12 points per 100 possessions, a rate of efficiency better than even last year’s historic Celtics. They have a legitimate claim to one of the best defenses of the past 10 years—and that has been the case even without the team’s most impactful defender in Chet Holmgren. The NBA Cup would simply be the next stepping stone en route to what could be a deep postseason run.
What It Means to the Golden State Warriors
The inaugural Cup saw a 38-year-old LeBron James take home MVP honors in the Lakers’ tournament run. It wasn’t quite long enough to be considered a Vegas residency, but it did have a whiff of that nostalgic, lifetime achievement sentiment. Might a 36-year-old Stephen Curry and the Warriors be able to run that back this year? Their quarterfinal matchup will be against a familiar foe—they faced Houston just last Thursday in a tightly contested slopfest, extending their winning streak against the Rockets to 15 games. The Warriors haven’t lost to the Rockets since 2020, but their in-season indicators aren’t quite as positive.
Golden State enters the quarterfinals as the only team in the remaining pool on a significant downturn, having lost six of its past eight games. Steph and Draymond Green are banged up, and there’s little margin for error in a year when the Western Conference boasts as many as 12 postseason hopefuls. And if the Warriors’ record in the NBA’s other major competitive overhaul is any indication, there might not be much reason for optimism: Golden State has yet to advance out of the Play-In Tournament in the two seasons they’ve been involved. The rumor mill has begun to churn. The Warriors are looking for a true star to shepherd the team through the twilight of Curry’s remaining superstar years. Perhaps a few days in Vegas inspires the front office to go all in?
What It Means to the Houston Rockets
“When the boat starts rocking, when you’re in a home game in the playoffs, that’s when special things can happen,” Pacers head coach Rick Carlisle said after defeating the eventual NBA champion Celtics in the very first Cup quarterfinal game last season. It was a slip-up considering it wasn’t actually a playoff game, but one that perfectly conveys the competitive energy and excitement that a single-elimination format summons. It was as close to a postseason atmosphere as the Pacers had experienced in years. And for a Rockets team that has steadily compiled young and exciting talent but also hasn’t been back to the playoffs since James Harden was running point, it’ll be a rare moment under the bright lights. How the team fares may clarify the answer to the team’s multiple-choice question of roster construction. Would winning it all reinforce the value of youth and a steady ascension? Or would it make it all the more tempting to make a splash for a true difference-making star?
In any case, the team’s identity has been laid bare. The Rockets are chaos incarnate—a team that plays to its strengths in an almost counterintuitive way. The team’s middling offense is buoyed by its defensive playmakers, who create moments of unbalance through rip-away steals and emphatic blocks that instantaneously become fast break opportunities. They are one of the worst shooting teams in the league, but get plenty of second-chance opportunities from crashing the offensive glass insistently, with one of the highest offensive rebounding rates of the past decade. This is a team built in the image of its platoon of do-it-all defensive aces who aren’t afraid to mix it up with players, referees, or even fans. They bring the kind of energy and tenacity that make games matter. An extended national TV viewing of the Terror Twins in action is how we “fix” the league.
What It Means to the Orlando Magic
Well, it was supposed to be a reckoning, a grand statement for the viability of Orlando as one of the East’s truly elite teams, that still had room to grow once fully healthy. The Magic’s defense is a superorganism that is seamless in its collective intention. Their guards hound and pressure, their wings react and recover, their bigs are wraiths that loom large on any given possession. Every player on the floor has the potential to erase a shot from the weak side. Teams simply can’t account for all of the Magic’s length, athleticism, and all-out intensity. They are hell for others on defense. At the same time, they are hell for themselves on the other end—they’re the only team remaining in the tournament in the NBA’s bottom third in offensive rating. And it might get much worse before it gets better.
What’s deeper than hell? That’s where the Magic find themselves now without the gravitational pull of either of its stars. Franz Wagner suffered a torn right oblique last week—the same injury that felled Paolo Banchero, forcing Wagner to step up in the first place. It’s a real bummer to Franz, who was compiling tournament numbers that would have put him in NBA Cup MVP contention, averaging 30.5 points, 7.5 rebounds, 6.3 assists, and 2.5 steals in his four Cup games.
The Magic still have plenty of defensive juice, but without any safety net or easy bucket-getting options, we could be looking at Stone Age offensive efficiency until Banchero’s return, which will likely come some time this month. Orlando has been trying to shore up its woeful perimeter shooting for seemingly the past half-decade to no avail: The team is dead last in the league in 3-point percentage and bottom seven in 3-point makes. The Magic have made due, winning 14 of their past 17 games, but it’s been painful watching the Magic clank their shots night after night. It’ll only get harder in this juncture without either of their tentpole stars.
What It Means to the Milwaukee Bucks
A nauseating 2-8 start to the season has given way to Giannis Antetokounmpo and Damian Lillard playing their best basketball as a duo, pulling the Bucks back within range of the East’s upper echelon. Lillard is playing the most efficient basketball of his career, absolutely decimating defenses out of the pick-and-roll the way we all had hoped for but didn’t quite see last season. But let’s be real here. The Bucks want this because Giannis wants this. The Bucks lost to the Pacers in the Cup semifinals last year. That isn’t good enough.
Antetokounmpo is no stranger to creating meaning out of thin air. Giannis tortured a rookie during training camp for trash talk that never happened—he’d invented a scenario in his head and played it out over reality as a means of motivation. He is also not passing up a cash prize of any sort. Giannis—whose legendary frugality is as much a part of his ethos as his grown-ass-kid energy—used to insist on splitting the dinner bill with the Bucks’ assistant video coordinator. But even these days, with one of the league’s highest base salary values, he scanned a QR code for free Wingstop during a game at Fiserv Forum last season after an opponent missed two free throws. You’re telling me he wouldn’t go all out for a potential $514,971 in winnings at best, $51,497 at worst?
