New York plays San Antonio for the NBA Cup on Tiesday
The New York Knicks basketball team is one win away from winning its first National Basketball Association championship since 1973. This championship, called the NBA Cup or originally called the NBA Cup but now is named after a Middle East airline, is a made-up tournament intended to make a select number of regular season games more interesting than a run of the mill regular season game. The Knicks will play San Antonio and one of the league’s brightest stars, the Spurs’ Victor Wembanyama, in Las Vegas for the “championship”.
The NBA Cup is all about money. The game is being played in Las Vegas for a reason. There is a reason that the game is in Las Vegas. There is money to be made there even if Las Vegas is going through a difficult time as tourism is way down from previous years. The game will be on Amazon Prime which gives the league another massive revenue stream. The players will also benefit.
The winning players get around $500,000 while the losers a bit more than $200,000. But does anyone really care? The NBA Cup is a little more than a dressed-up tournament. Is it more important to the NBA than the traditional Christmas Day rollout on TV of the league? Probably not and the Christmas Day promotion showcases players but it’s just one regular game for all the teams playing. The NBA Cup was born out of boredom with the what seems endless regular season which is just a warm up for the playoffs.
Twenty of the 30 teams get a playoff spot. To juice up the playoffs, the NBA created another money-making tournament. The “play in” which has each conference’s seventh and tenth place team along with each conference’s eighth and ninth place team face off with the winner’s getting a ticket to the playoffs.
But you cannot blame NBA owners or players for the NBA Cup existence as both entities are chasing money. At one time, the NBA Championship was the be all and end all for basketball. But now it’s the NBA Cup, the Olympics every four years and with the NBA trying to establish a presence in Europe, there will be some pot of gold at the end of that rainbow. All sports have changed in the pursuit of money.
The National Hockey League is going to send players to the Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in less than two months. Well, that’s the plan. But the NHL brass is concerned about the size of the ice in the Milan arena which is still not complete and the quality of the ice. The NHL is threatening to keep the players at home. But there is a global audience and money to be made eventually from selling hats and T-shirts in Italy. The Olympics brass won’t let the NHL brass sell trinkets, it is the International Olympic Committee’s show but if the ice is good in Milan, the league could eventually put a game in town.
Even with good ice, players can get injured and that could ruin a season for a player and a team. The New York Islanders John Tavares injured his knee during a 2014 Sochi Olympics Canada’s quarterfinal game. Tavares was the NHL’s third-leading scorer at the time and missed the rest of the Islanders’ season. Although even with Tavares, the team probably would have missed the playoffs as the team was not very good. Still people spent a lot of money to watch the Islanders that year and the team’s star player was missing because of an injury that was suffered in a non-league tournament.
But that does beg the question. What is more important, an Olympic Gold Medal or the Stanley Cup?
Speaking of injuries, the New York Mets reliever Edwin Diaz tore the patellar tendon in his right knee during the 2023 World Baseball Classic while celebrating Puerto Rico’s victory over the Dominican Republic. It was a season-ending injury and put the Mets into a bind before the start of the 2023 season. The Mets could not find an adequate replacement. Diaz had a brilliant 2022 season. He signed a five-year, $102 million contract he signed after that season. But he was injured in a made for money tournament that took place during spring training, a time where players slowly get ready for the regular season. The World Baseball Classic will return in 2026.
But that does beg the question. What is more important, a made-up money producing tournament that provides others another opportunity to sell hats and T-shirts in baseball playing countries or the World Series?
Money talks. That is why the NBA Cup exists. That is why the World Baseball Classic exists. That is why NBA and NHL players are participating in the Olympics. Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred and his bosses, MLB owners, want to get onto that Olympic platform in Los Angeles in 2028. So does Roger Goodell, the NFL ownership and the Green Bay Packers Board of Directors.
The Knicks are one game away from a meaningless championship. But if the team wins, there is a fresh opportunity to sell New York Knicks, with some airline’s name NBA Cup championship splashed on T-shirts and hats.
Jalen Brunson
