Why the Celtics should never treat the NBA Cup like real history
On Tuesday, the Knicks (18-7) became the third team in NBA history to hoist the NBA Cup, joining the 2023 Lakers and 2024 Bucks as the only teams to win the league’s fairly new in-season tournament.
In my mind, the NBA Cup is just fancy marketing for games that count the same as regular season competition. Sure, there’s a trophy on the line. And yes, every player is awarded $500,000 upon winning the tournament, but when the tournament is a part of the schedule that helps determine seeding for a different tournament next spring, it loses its luster, to me. It’s almost like a prelim tournament, except winning this thing doesn’t even guarantee you a berth in the NBA postseason.
The whole thing has felt forced from the jump. The fancy courts are generally ugly with a few minor exceptions (the Celtics not being one of them), and the rules for the tournament are not easily explainable.
A quick synopsis:
- Event features two phases: Group Play and Knockout Rounds
- Teams were divided into five-team groups within each conference based on their 2024-25 regular season records
- Celtics (15-11) landed in East Group B with the Nets (7-18), Pistons (21-5), Magic (15-11), and 76ers (14-11)
- Each team plays four Group Play games - one against every opponent in its group, split evenly between home and road contests
- “Cup Nights” occurred every Friday from October 31 to November 28, with extra games on November 25 and 26. Only Group Play matchups were held on those nights
- Best team from each group plus one wild card per conference advanced to single-elimination Knockout Rounds
- Quarterfinals in home markets, Semifinals and Championship held in Las Vegas
…you follow all of that?
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As a general rule of thumb - I think when launching anything new in media, whether it’s sports, movies, music, tech, whatever, you should be able to explain what it is in less than 20 seconds. No one in today’s day and age has the attention span for anything more than that. So on that front, I feel like the NBA has failed in the first few years of NBA Cup play.
Additionally - how these teams celebrate their NBA Cup win moving forward is something I find interesting.
When a franchise like the Lakers (18-7) or Celtics wins an NBA Cup, are they expected to treat it like one of their many championships?
When the Lakers won the first ever NBA Cup (then called the “In-Season Tournament”), they raised a pentagon-shaped banner that left room for additional years to be added in the future, akin to something you’d see from a team that has a division championships banner that adds wins over the years. It’s a different color, shape and design from any of their 17 NBA Championship banners (5 of which were won while the team was in Minneapolis - not discussed enough).
With the Celtics’ biggest Eastern Conference rival at the moment winning it last night, and with their biggest all-time rival winning it in 2023, it got me thinking about how the Celtics would ever handle winning the NBA Cup, if they were ever to do so.
In theory, they’d follow suit with the Lakers, given how similar their histories align with championships (17 vs. 18), all-time great players, etc. But then I thought more about it, and I’m on the opposite end.
The Celtics don’t have any Atlantic Division Champions catch-all banner hanging at TD Garden. Why start that type of thing with the NBA Cup?
When did celebrating anything other than a championship for one of the NBA’s crown jewel franchises become acceptable?
I don’t care if it looks different than the 18 white banners with green lettering that hang across the court from the Bruins’ six gold Stanley Cup banners. It would look out of place, and is not necessary. A pregame ceremony to hang an NBA Cup banner? Who wants that?
Now, if I’m the Knicks? I might treat this a little differently.
The franchise might think of itself as a crown jewel team, but they haven’t won a true title since 1973.
If James Dolan wants to raise a banner into the Madison Square Garden rafters next to Billy Joel’s 150th show banner, have at it. Not much else to celebrate in that building since Richard Nixon was impeached.
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Tom Carroll is a contributor for Roundtable, with boots-on-the-ground coverage of all things Boston sports. He's a senior digital content producer for WEEI.com, and a native of Lincoln, RI.