If you asked ten different NBA fans for their opinion on the NBA Cup, you’ll probably get ten different answers. Some may refer to it as an unnecessary money grab, others might ooze with excitement about more meaningful regular-season basketball, and some will fall in the middle, recognizing the benefits while still hoping for more.

Regardless of where you stand on the NBA’s new shiny toy, it’s hard to ignore. The courts, the advertising, the whole Vegas thing that seems entirely too forced. It’s clear that the league is focused on making this a thing, and to some extent, they should be. We’re almost done with the second edition of the now called “Emirates NBA Cup”, and I think it’s safe to say the optimism around the event assuredly outweighs the pessimism. The product was never going to be perfect from the start.

Tweaks will need to be made and the allure around the Cup will need to continue to grow, but it’s on the right track. My opinions on the current status of the NBA Cup, and how the product can improve in the future:

The Good

The NBA’s main goal of implementing this new in-season tournament was to generate some more buzz around the typically monotonous early part of the NBA season. It’s always going to be tough to get fans to care too much about games 1-20 while football is in full swing, but the league needed to inject a little more juice into the first few months of the season.

After two years of the Cup, I think it’s safe to say they’ve accomplished that task. Teams, players, and fans have responded well to the tournament, showing a legitimate interest that is directly translating to higher quality, more intense games.

These games don’t need to feel like Game 7 of a playoff series to have the impact the NBA is hoping for. All they want is an incremental increase in anticipation, consequence, and competitiveness, and they’re getting it. The games have just felt different, even if it’s in the slightest way. Watching teams try to stay alive in their groups, fight until the last second for point differential purposes, and treat elimination games with real intensity has been fun.

In my opinion, the best part of this new addition has been how impactful it has the chance to be for the younger, up-and-coming teams. Throughout the first two years, we’ve seen newer groups like the Pacers (2023), Magic, Rockets, and Thunder make real runs in this tournament while treating it like a big deal. Getting buy-in from the younger generation of players is essential, and so far, they truly seem to care.

It’s a great opportunity for emerging teams to play in high-leverage games that they might not have experienced in the league yet. The Pacers’ improbable run in last year’s in-season tournament almost certainly had an impact on their Eastern Conference Finals appearance.

This year’s tournament successes by the Magic and Rockets likely validated their confidence in themselves as real conference contenders. Even if there’s only a handful of real title contenders in the league, that doesn’t matter in this tournament. Any team can get hot for a few weeks and have the chance to use the Cup as a springboard for the rest of their season and beyond. Getting more players and teams the chance to play in important, consequential games will never be a bad thing.

A few smaller details I’ve liked so far:

• Tuesday/Friday gamedays: The days in particular are made to avoid competition with football, and I think it works really well. NBA fans will soon get into the routine of treating November Tuesday’s and Friday’s a bit differently if the schedule stays the same. It’s nice to look forward to these nights and know that some quality games are coming. I hope they keep this consistent in the near future. The more things stay the same for the NBA Cup, the quicker it will catch on (as long as the things are good).
• Naming it the NBA Cup is 100x better than what we got last year which was the In-Season Tournament (IST). It’s simple and wasn’t exactly hard to come up with, but it works.
• Point differential: It’s kind of funky, but I like it. It ensures that teams play hard until the clock hits double zeros, and it makes closeout games and scenarios more interesting. I have a hunch it won’t stick around long-term mainly because the players don’t seem to love it, but for now, it’s exciting.

The Bad

Vegas has been a swing and a miss so far. I know the NBA is do desperately trying to make Las Vegas the “hub” of the league one day, and that might be the right thing to do, but it just hasn’t worked yet. The local game times are really strange and inconvenient, the crowds have been less than impressive, and it’s likely that a good number of the teams (and their fanbases) in the semifinals are more than halfway across the country.

To make it worse, the NBA has marketed the whole Vegas thing more than anything else over the past few years, and it just feels really forced. Neutral site NBA games will likely never draw huge crowds, and a majority of the fans will just be locals with no strong rooting interest. I would much rather them play all the games in home arenas, giving even more incentive for teams to earn better seeds in group play. The environments would be much better and it would be more accessible for the real fans. I understand that that probably won’t happen due to revenue generation purposes, but a man can dream.

I still think the incentive is too little, but striking the right balance between too influential and not impactful enough will be hard. As of now, I’m still not convinced that every team really wants to go to Vegas and win the tournament.

No team is going to actively try and lose a game or anything like that, but it’s hard to imagine the current incentive being enough to motivate a team like the Celtics. Teams like Boston who are solely focused on the postseason and winning a title are surely not heartbroken by not advancing out of the group stage. Instead of traveling across the country, playing an extra game or two, and taking on more injury risk, Boston will play just three games in 11 days, giving them some valuable rest and reset time.

The reward just seems too small for older, injury prone, championship-caliber teams to really care about it. In a way it’s a shame that we need this much of an incentive to ensure the quality of the tournament, but until every team in the league has a strong motive to try and win this thing, it won’t reach its ceiling. Whether the reward is a protected play-in/playoff spot, draft compensation, or more money, I’m not sure.

A protected playoff spot seems like too much and presents a lot of problems for competitive reasons. Draft compensation won’t exactly do much for a player’s motivation, and more money is hopefully not the right answer. I think something like adding a few wins to your regular season total might work, but I’ll be interested to see what the league does.

A few other things that might need tweaked:

• Timing: I like the November-December window, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the league tinkered with the timing a bit. Having this at the very beginning of the season or right before the All-Star break seem like decent options as well.
• The courts: The courts have probably been the most discussed part of the NBA Cup. I think everyone gets the idea behind it and it’s certainly drawn some attention, but they are legitimately hard to look at on TV. I’d like to see them toned down a bit for next year. And, I speak for all NBA fans when I say this: If every team can get a custom, colored court for two regular season games, certainly we can get the Larry O’Brien Trophy on the middle of the Finals court. Thank you.
• The groups: The random group draw is a bit weird. I think the NBA Cup could be a good chance to mix conferences within the groups, giving teams some different and more unusual matchups. Picking groups based off last year’s tournament results could also be interesting, but I think there’s definitely more to explore here.