It’s time to fall in love with the magic of the cup
There’s a lot of hype for the upcoming COVID Cup in Orlando, but there’s another sort of cup the NBA should be taking a closer look at.
The magic of the cup. It’s the sort of phrase that’s almost impossible to quantify, but soccer and basketball fans across Europe understand its ubiquity. Every major European soccer league has an in-season domestic cup. In England, it’s the FA Cup, Italy, the Coppa Italia, Germany, the DFB Pokal… you get the picture.
These cups are prestigious and come with substantial historical clout, with many fans across Europe celebrating these cups as dearly as if they’d won the league itself.
It’s important to note that the biggest clubs in each league would rather hoist the league trophy than the cup trophy, but for the majority of clubs in every league, the opportunity at adding some silverware via the cup is irresistible.
Late last year, the NBA gave serious thought to the idea of adding an in-season tournament to the schedule. The proposals the league considered were reportedly centred around an early-season tournament aimed at spicing up the sometimes-slow November slate, but this would be a mistake.
The tournament should be held around the start of the New Year, and player performance should be taken into consideration for All-Star and awards voting. It could be called the Kobe Cup, commemorating one of the greats of the game, and should adopt a single-elimination format involving all 30 teams.
It could look something like this: the teams with the two best records in the league will receive a first-round bye. From the second round onwards, a standard single-elimination format should be adopted, giving us a total of five rounds, including the final.
The proposals the NBA has heard would set aside a period of time, say two weeks, and have the tournament completed with no regular-season games taking place, but again, this is the wrong way to go.
The league should follow the example set by European cup tournaments, staggering games throughout the regular season, with the final set to conclude before the All-Stars have been announced, adding another dimension to the stale early-season slate.
One of the best ways to ensure that an early-season game between Atlanta and Minnesota is genuinely engaging is to add some tangible stakes. A big performance from Karl-Anthony Towns wouldn’t be abstracted, relevant to standings that will come into play months later, its impact would be recognisable and something to celebrate.
By spacing out the games, the league would allow a sense of narrative to evolve, with teams and fans looking forward to the next round of Kobe Cup games. A December to late January schedule would allow the league enough space to allow recovery time and ensure that regular-season games aren’t impacted. The league could also use this as an opportunity to trim games from the regular season, as has been discussed for years.
The NBA likes to think of itself as the pinnacle of innovation among American sports leagues and has heard a variety of creative pitches surrounding the idea of a cup competition. It’s operating from the standpoint that teams will be less motivated to compete for this cup than they will for a championship, and as a result, the level of play will be poor, stars will rest and the cup will flounder.
To rectify this issue, the league has heard proposals that offer draft compensation or playoff seeding boosts as a reward. The idea here is that teams and front offices will have to be incentivised in creative ways to actually play their stars in the tournament, but this is also a mistake.
I’ll level with you, initially, teams might be reluctant to go all out in pursuit of the Kobe Cup, but adding unwieldy methods of compensation isn’t necessary.
Players aren’t going to play hard for draft picks or abstract seeding advantages, players are going to play hard to win. Because here’s the thing, the magic of the cup is real, and players, coaches, front offices and fans are going to realise that pretty early on.
If the Suns wax the Lakers in the cup every year, the Lakers are going to get tired of that pretty quickly. The Suns’ fanbase can hold that over the Lakers fan base and it will add another dimension to an already testy rivalry. The Suns, for their part, are going to go hell for leather every year because they’re desperate to get their hands on some silverware. Ditto for the 20 teams in the league every year with no real chance of hoisting Larry at the end of the year.
The Hornets, with their mercurial scoring guards, might fancy themselves in a single-elimination tournament. If Devonte’ Graham gets hot for a three-game stretch, Charlotte could find themselves two wins away from lifting a trophy. For the teams lower down the pecking order, the appeal is obvious.
For the consistent postseason operators with no real success, the appeal is equally obvious.
Let’s look at the Portland Trail Blazers, for example. During the Damian Lillard era, Portland has one Conference Finals appearance in which they were roundly beaten. Dame looks like the most prominent candidate among current superstars to end his career without a ring.
It’s a cruel injustice that so many transcendent talents finish their careers without claiming any silverware.
Things might be different, however, if Dame ended his career as a two-time Kobe Cup champion, with a 50-piece in one of the finals. Sure, he could never deliver the big one, and he’ll be remembered for that, but he’ll also be remembered for elevating his game in a single-elimination format and coming through when it mattered.
The elite teams in the league will always have their focus on winning a championship, and rightly so, but an in-season cup will create a new ability to substantiate their greatness. Soccer fans will be familiar with the concept of ‘the double’, and even ‘the treble’, but for those unaware, it refers to a side that wins not only the league title, but also cup tournaments.
A double-winning side has established dominance over the rest of the competition and provides a standard by which to judge future champions. We look back fondly on ‘the double-winning side’ as some of the greatest of our time.
Lebron’s legacy might look a hell of a lot different if he guides the Lakers to the double next season, cementing his authority over the rest of the league.
The cup also provides the opportunity for folk heroes to be born amid the single-elimination format. One player can have an outsized effect on the competition. We could see a massive effort from an ascendant star take over the tournament and bring a trophy to his team. Wouldn’t it be spicy if Jayson Tatum’s emergence into an All-Star from December to January this season happened before our eyes in the Kobe Cup?
The worst-case scenario for the tournament is that established teams use the cup as a player development exercise, playing their younger guys heavy minutes. Some teams in Europe do this too and to some extent it’s inevitable.
Whilst we want to see the best players competing in the cup, this worst case isn’t unpalatable. We would see coming-out parties for younger players, showcases of potential that might impact a player’s trade value, and crazy games memorialised. Instead of Lonnie Walker’s occasional scoring outbursts, we might see him put up 30 a game in the early rounds whilst Demar DeRozan rests, before sliding into a complementary role when DeRozan joins the lineup to clinch the trophy.
There are a million different ways that teams could approach the Kobe Cup, but almost all of them are fun.
The variety of the cup format in European soccer is part of the reason it’s so entertaining. The Manchester City side of 2018–19 won the domestic treble and will be remembered as one of the most dominant sides the Premier League has ever seen, but the 2012–13 Wigan Athletic outfit that miraculously won the FA Cup stands out as one of the all-time greatest underdog stories. The Wigan fanbase will celebrate that famous victory for decades to come, fathers will tell their sons about it, and it will pass into legend.
Part of the reason the FA Cup is so prestigious is because of the history that has accrued over the past 150 years, and it’s obvious that the NBA’s tournament won’t carry that cache right away. But in the same way we remember the Lakers dynasty of the early 2000s and the hard-nosed Pistons that overcame them in 2004, each cup champion will carry its own story that will fade into the tapestry of NBA lore as time passes. Hopefully, in a few years time, the cup will be seen as an indispensable piece of the NBA landscape. Hopefully, we fall in love with the magic of the cup.
