Chapter 1: What are the hosts' initial thoughts on the NBA Cup?
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the NBA Daily. I'm Dave DuFour here with Espera Henney. We're joined by James Edwards, who covers the Knicks. We're live in Vegas. NBA Cup championship between the Knicks and Spurs tonight. Yes, the ultimate respect the cup moment. That's right. Do you respect the cup, James? Yeah.
Do you respect the cup? I don't. Because, let me get this out. My biggest issue with the cup is the propaganda around it, right? I don't know if you guys get these tweets or see these tweets as somebody that covers a team and routinely is like, I think this is pointless. I see these tweets.
It's the propaganda of the league admitting that their regular season product in their eyes isn't good enough. So we have to create this whole thing. That's an issue to me. Like you shouldn't. if your regular season isn't what you want it to be, then let's fix it in a way that let's shorten the season.
Okay. But we know the reasons why, like no one wants to make less money. Right. Okay. And so you've got this number of games that you got, although that may change because the regional networks are going to go away. And right. So you're not selling the same packages. They're not going to reduce 82. Well, but they should. I, I agree with you. Number one, 82 game season.
Like we talk about this all the time. The value of each game is so low. You know, college football has this great thing where one bad week and you're out of it. And, you know, I do think like the NBA misses out on that. It's one of the reasons why the cup to me is good because basketball at its best is single elimination.
tournament yeah the march madness and so you get a little bit of that here right i would actually and i got an idea here cook it's not to fix the cup i actually think the cup is good it's the regular season that's the problem okay from what standpoint just too long it's too long okay and and we we talk all the time about how many games how many minutes all these guys have to play yeah so what if you do reduce the season
to 58 games, let's say, it's a home and away for everybody. It's a balanced schedule, which we talk about often. I wouldn't get rid of conferences because I actually think it feels like sports to have. You're living in a utopia. Yeah, I am. Oh, I am.
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Chapter 2: What challenges do the Knicks face in the NBA Cup?
Let's get rid of divisions yesterday, though. Divisions, fine, but conferences, whatever. But to me, you use the NBA Cup as a preseason warm-up tournament, and you do it in a way that actually encourages teams to play
all of their guys if not at least 10 25 minute player limits per guy three games a week expand the elimination tournament part of it out yeah i agree and then you have your championship game maybe you do it in neutral site i don't know but you have your championship game and then you know you do that a week before christmas yeah and then you kick off the regular season at christmas with the 58 game schedule
Number one, guys have time to get totally conditioned for the arduous actual regular season.
I like this idea. It's a great idea.
It's a great way to introduce rookies. You know, you get to build up these guys.
Build up hype for the season. The G League does this already. They have their tip-off tournament, which is like a month, a month and a half of the season. And then exactly like the NBA Cup, they go to Orlando. They play a showcase tournament, quarterfinals, semifinals, et cetera. And that's how they do their tournament. And it starts the season. Christmas is when the season starts.
Yeah. And that fixes two birds, one stone. Right. Because it's not you ever do this, by the way. Of course not. Because but you're actually able to serve the cup and tournament part, which is fun. And then you you get a better regular season, in my opinion.
I like this a lot. I think that's that's a really good take. I think the season needs to be shortened. But the other thing that I have an issue with is, again, I keep bringing up the word propaganda.
Yeah.
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Chapter 3: How do the Spurs view their chances in the NBA Cup?
I don't know how to check this, but I can't imagine that at this point will a team have ever... I can't imagine a team has ever traveled as much because the cup is new. Right. So they've had to do two cross country flights. Right. Well, they'll have to do two. They went to Abu Dhabi and that automatically boosts. Right. Because I think they're in back to Abu Dhabi.
I think NBA teams average like 40,000 miles a season. I think Abu Dhabi there in back is almost 40,000 or close. Or maybe a quarter or four.
Maybe it's 10,000. It's probably like 40,000 is like a couple of times. It's been a long 10 days. Do it like Superman and go in the opposite direction. You get that day back.
Right. Well, my point is a quarter of that was done for the Knicks in a week in the preseason.
Yeah.
So the travel is insane. Like, yeah, if you're the Raptors or any other team that's not here, one of the four teams that wasn't here, like you're probably looking at this like. You get a little bit of a benefit.
Yeah, there's a benefit there. The slump.
The slump after getting hit, right? You get that hit. We're going to be watching for this. I mean, the team's coming out of the championship game. We've seen them kind of have a swoon right after. Part of it also could just be that there is a little bit of intensity in a single elimination game, regardless of whether it means more or not. They're playing for money. They're here. Mm-hmm.
So maybe there's some of that. I don't know. But I think the scheduling part of this, it's got to change. And one big change that they're going to make next year is only the final will be in Vegas. I think that's going to be better. That game, if it's in Orlando or if it's in MSG.
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Chapter 4: What changes could improve the NBA Cup format?
Oh, it's not. It's not Andrew Schlecht from outside.
It might not even be.
Well, it should be some it's regardless. It should be in the middle of the country. Yeah. Like that's the league is so is talking about like travel and health. So you're making. Yeah. Making two teams fly from the bottom part of the country across and from the tip of the one side of the other almost. And it's like, yeah, come on. Well, there's there's a lot of places in the middle. All right.
Should we talk about the Knicks a little bit? Yeah.
OK, we've. basically arrived at the point where we feel like they're the best team in the East.
We also recently talked about this with you.
Front runner to make it, I think, out of the East come playoff time. What do you feel is different about this team from last year with Tom Thibodeau and now to Mike Brown? What's been the biggest change for this season?
I think there's... So it's really weird because I actually wrote this today. I talked to four or five NBA head coaches, what they think the difference is between the two teams. And if you look at the pace, the pace isn't any different. If you look at paint touches, it's not any different. You look at offensive rating, it's not any different. They were top five with Tibbs or top five with Mike.
They were top 15 in defense at this point with Tibbs or top 15 with Mike. I do think there is a little bit more movement. I don't, even though they're not playing faster, it feels like there is more movement. Yeah. Even though I do think lately they reverted back to like more Brunson cat pick and roll. And listen, they're two of the best offense players in the world.
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Chapter 5: How does the Knicks' performance compare to last season?
I don't even know what day it is. NBA Cup, baby. And I asked him about that specifically because when we were asking all the Spurs players before the season, what's your expectation? They were all like playing playoffs. Victor was the one that made waves where he said six seed. Right. And that was like we were like, really, buddy? You sure about that? You sure about that?
He was probably underselling it, as you can tell, right? He was sure about that. And his injury was a blessing in disguise for this team, which is crazy to say.
Because they figured out how to play without him.
They finally played. That was the offense that they were talking about playing from the beginning. He was the problem. Having one of the best players in the world, that was what was holding them back from being a great team.
And so now that they have finally done that, this is a joke, I'll bring it around, which is that now that they have him and they're able to understand how their spacing works, how their timing works, how they want to push, everybody has more confidence because they've gotten more reps.
Now they can put that all together and their next month or two is about finding the synergies between the way they can slow things down and play over the top of Victor and the way they can keep things moving, playing through guys like Fox and Harper and Castle. And that's not going to happen overnight.
And the fact that they at least were good enough to beat the thunder where they're like just trying to figure out what is our real true identity here shows why you just can't put a ceiling on this team as we just the height. The possibilities are too good.
They're also such a unique team because their guards are the guys putting pressure on the rim consistently. But it's Wemby. That's the perimeter oriented player who's.
like still trying to get into the paint and work in the post more often but it's just it's unique compared to even what you see in modern basketball right now it's the guards that are putting pressure versus the the big that's playing on the outside is that also something that they have talked about before
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