The NBA Cup is not a Championship

“Wilbon, which team would this phony-baloney tournament mean more to, the Spurs or the Knicks?,” so asked the great Tony Kornheiser on ESPN’s PTI.

Of course the Knicks would go on to win over the Spurs and hoist the NBA Cup.

After the game, a Knicks player was asked something to the effect of “with the Knicks not winning a championship in (52 years) what does this mean?”

What in the world. The NBA Cup is not a championship.

‘Well Soccer does it so it’s not a gimmick’. That seems to be the prevailing argument of the day in favor of the NBA Cup. It’s innovative.

Either way it’s not a championship.

There are no playoffs, there is no season grind. There is plenty of load management during the in-season tournament that is the NBA Cup.

The real Championship happens at the end of season, this is universal for all sports.

The bridge too far is when ESPN.com’s homepage had in bold “NBA Cup Championship” when featuring the final game on its homepage.  

Everyone kept saying thank you to Adam Silver, former coach and current TV analyst Stan Van Gundy on Prime was one. The NBA Cup has its merits. Making it to the final Cup game or winning it might signal that a team can compete in the real playoffs. Many fans are rightfully hoping that the Spurs can replicate their success and we’ll see Wemby and Co, make a run come April and May.

Michael Wilbon countered Kornheiser’s curmudgeon with a point, that the younger players actually get hyped for the in-season tournament.

“Listen, you and I feel the same way about this whole thing, but younger players don’t,” Wilbon explained.

“And I covered the first one, I was there for it two years ago. I know exactly what younger players—I remember talking to Halliburton that night when the Pacers played. No, it means a lot to the stars of those teams. And to Wembanyama. It—it’s a steal from soccer, but Wembanyama grew up in Europe. He’s French. It means everything. And so the cup does, the competition does, it does. And if the Knicks were to win this and hang a banner, I would make fun of you and everybody in New York who ever cheered for the Knicks for the rest of time. They better not hang a banner in the world’s most famous arena for this. The Spurs is different. They’re a kiddie team and they’re hellacious. They are stalking everybody in the league. It would mean a lot to them and I’m gonna try to watch as much of this as I can.”

Kornhieser went on to call it an “invented tournament”, adding “People sat around in the NBA offices and they said, “Let’s have an in-season tournament because this is what soccer does”. And the NBA looks at soccer’s global draw and says, “This is what we want”. Let’s put this tournament at the beginning of the season, maybe create a buzz because we’re gonna get crushed by the NFL. Let’s see if we can focus on us. We’ll put it out there; this is who we are, will you watch us? And that’s fine; it’s fine if you want to watch it. The winner will be forgotten by Friday.”

For the foreseeable future, the NBA Cup is just a thing. No one is quite sure what it means quite yet.