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Tim Bontemps
As the New York Knicks and Orlando Magic tipped off the first of two Emirates NBA Cup semifinal games Saturday at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, plenty of empty seats — particularly in the upper level — were scattered across the building.
The NBA Cup, which is in its third season, has largely accomplished the objective laid out by commissioner Adam Silver when he first championed the in-season tournament. It has successfully increased the spotlight on the NBA during the early part of the season, when college football and the NFL traditionally dominate the sports calendar. Players have bought in, too, if for no other reason than the more than $500,000 at stake for title-winning players.
What hasn’t caught on is the atmosphere of the tournament’s final stretch to decide a champion. That’s in part why the league announced in September that 2025 would be the final Cup featuring a neutral-site semifinals, a recognition that the approach has lacked the energy and enthusiasm the league had hoped to create.
And it seems the NBA is pondering another change. Sources familiar with the situation told ESPN recently that the league is considering also moving the title game out of Las Vegas.
Beyond the tournament’s future in Las Vegas, there has been plenty of chatter in the lead-up to Tuesday night’s finale between the Knicks and San Antonio Spurs. From the motivation of prize money and continued frustrations over the schedule, to the growing trend of the knockout rounds showcasing the league’s young talent, here is what players and coaches have said about the third installment of the NBA Cup.
The semifinal shift is a welcome one
If the venue changes for the semifinals of the Cup began this season, those matchups would have been held in Orlando and Oklahoma City because the Magic and Thunder entered the knockout stage as the top seeds in the Eastern and Western Conference brackets, respectively. Both teams lost Saturday in Vegas.
Not surprisingly, the two coaches who would’ve benefitted — Magic coach Jamahl Mosley and Thunder coach Mark Daigneault — approved of the move.
«Oh, absolutely,» Mosley said with a smile when asked about the change ahead of Saturday’s game. «Who wouldn’t want to take a home-court advantage?
«I think it’s similar to playoffs. You earn the right to get the higher seed … I think that’s very important.»
Saturday’s matchups could occur again in the 2026 playoffs. Orlando and New York have had some feisty games over the past couple of seasons to create a nascent rivalry between the two franchises. Meanwhile, there is plenty of history between the Thunder and Spurs, who met in the playoffs in 2012, 2014 and 2016. Young star big men Victor Wembanyama and Chet Holmgren have faced off numerous times, a rivalry that began at the FIBA U-19 championship game more than four years ago.
Imagine a scenario where Wembanyama, who had missed the previous 12 games because of a calf strain, returned inside a cauldron of intensity in Oklahoma City as the Thunder looked to continue their record-setting start? Or if the Magic got an extra home game to play a Knicks team it could face again late in the East playoffs?
«It’s a good change by [the league], and it’s further incentive [for teams],» Daigneault said. «They want these Cup games to be elevated. Obviously, the cash prize does that. The difference of branding or whatever does that. They are on TV. They are isolated to certain nights. They have done a nice job there.
«But I think it’s further incentive to really go after those games if you can potentially get an extra home game out of it, for sure.»
Money remains a motivating factor
Plenty of discussion over the past few days centered on the cash prize for every player, and what they would do with the money their team won.
«[Jaylin Williams] reminds us the exact dollar amount every single day.» Thunder forward Jalen Williams said Friday, one day before OKC lost to the Spurs in a thrilling semifinal game.
«Half a million dollars is a lot of money, regardless if you make what I make or whatever the case may be, you know what I mean. That’s enough money to get you going and play hard.»
After San Antonio clinched a spot in the knockout round of the tournament with a win over the Denver Nuggets, Spurs forward Keldon Johnson said, «for $500,000, I’d play in a back-to-back-to-back. I’ll run through a wall.»
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One major motivator among players is giving teammates on two-way contracts or young guys at the end of the roster a chance at life-changing money.
«We don’t speak on the value of it [to the two-way players] as much as what it really is,» Mavericks guard D’Angelo Russell said. «A lot of guys that didn’t really need it [were motivated] knowing that those guys get an extra piece of the cake.»
That has been a common refrain over the past couple of years, with LeBron James and Anthony Davis two years ago and then Damian Lillard last year openly talking about their happiness at getting those end-of-roster players more money.
«A lot of people in the league don’t make the funds of all the franchise players, the superstars,» Suns forward Ryan Dunn said. «Having that chance, having that opportunity is big for them.»
«You want to win for those [two-way] guys.»
The schedule — and frustrations regarding it — aren’t changing
This month, several team officials complained about the condensed schedule as the league tried to fit Cup games into the early part of the NBA calendar.
There’s only one problem: The data doesn’t back it up.
Through Sunday night’s action, there had been 354 games played this season — four fewer games from the same point last season and two more than two seasons, before the addition of the in-season tournament.
Meanwhile, stretches of five games in seven days remain from past seasons, and overall, they will be down from 2024-25. But with many teams getting multiple four- or five-day gaps in their schedule as the knockout rounds play out, those dates have to be made up at some point during the regular season.
The added travel was a more immediate concern to the teams playing in Las Vegas. Last year, it was Oklahoma City going from its Cup title game defeat to a road back-to-back set against Orlando and the Miami Heat. Last month, Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers described the toll winning the 2024 NBA Cup took on his team.
«I think the attention that it gets has been amazing,» Rivers said. «Now, I will say, on the back end of it, the team that has won it has struggled coming out. I found that out last year. It’s hard.»
This season, the Magic would have faced a 16-day road trip if they had beaten the Knicks on Saturday — Orlando starts a four-game western road trip Thursday against the Denver Nuggets.
«Move it to New York,» Knicks coach Mike Brown said with a smile. «I’d like that. Let somebody else fly that way for six hours or whatever it was. You know, again, Vegas is great. But to move it around. …
«Initially, I doubted them on the Cup, Initially, I doubted them on the play-in games, and they are both phenomenal. So, I really don’t know what the hell I’m talking about, so I’m going to leave it up to Adam [Silver].»
The Cup spotlight remains a springboard
Last season, the Thunder were in the early stages of their historic championship season when they arrived in Las Vegas for the NBA Cup semifinals. And though the Thunder played one of their worst games of that season in the title matchup against the Bucks, OKC guard Jalen Williams said the experience helped prepare the young team for the bright lights of the NBA Finals.
«This right now, like doing the media scrum, I’m going to stay here hours after practice,» Williams said Friday. «Just that kind of stuff was what happened in the Finals. That’s what happened during the playoffs. It gave us a good gauge of what to expect.
«The biggest thing is how to use my time wisely, to know when to get treatment and still stay in a routine. We get to practice it, we get to utilize this.»
Perhaps the biggest benefit of the Cup has been allowing up-and-coming teams to showcase themselves on a bigger stage.
Two years ago, when the Indiana Pacers beat the Boston Celtics and the Bucks en route to the Cup championship game against the Los Angeles Lakers, Pacers star guard Tyrese Haliburton emerged into the national spotlight. Indiana’s Cup experience helped the team prepare for what eventually became a thrilling run to Game 7 of the 2025 Finals.
Even the Houston Rockets, despite losing to the Thunder in the Cup semifinals last year, were a young team that got a taste of a big stage ahead of their seven-game slugfest against the Golden State Warriors in the first round of the playoffs.
For teams like Orlando, which hasn’t won a playoff series since 2010, and San Antonio, which hasn’t made the playoffs since 2019, the Cup presents an opportunity to experience the pressure of a one-game scenario.
«It’s a tremendous opportunity to play on this stage,» Magic star Paolo Banchero said. «You can just tell by all the stuff going on.»
For the young Spurs and coach Mitch Johnson, the road to the NBA Cup title game represents the biggest challenge the group has faced.
«I think we can all go to any part of our lives, personally, professionally, where usually experience helps you gain some wisdom,» Johnson said.
«We’re kind of just trying to take all this day by day and know it’s a lot of unknown, for a lot of us, not only individually but most of us as a group. … Don’t try to make it more than that, but also allow it to be a positive influence.»
ESPN’s Tim MacMahon, Dave McMenamin and Michael C. Wright contributed to this report.
