A Small, Good Thing
Go for the Cup. That's all.
There was a moment a couple of weeks ago where the NBA’s collective neuroticism was on full display. The Knicks, playing on 1.5 speed, defeated the arguably most-hyped-in-the-league Spurs. The game arrived after a hard fought semi-finals round, where Victor Wembanyama understood the assignment and talked trash about Oklahoma City’s foul grifting and called New York unsophisticated. Both comments seem almost perfectly optimized to get under the skin of the targeted teams and their respective fans and helped set up some personal stakes for the players. Despite the fun, all anyone seemed to be able to talk about after the Cup finals game was whether or not the NBA mid-season tournament matters, if it should be moved, if players care, if banners should be hung, and on and on. It is amazing anyone was able to type with all the handwringing.
This insecurity is not new to the league, but it is notable that it managed to escape the confines of ‘back-in-my-day’ talking heads and land in some of the more thoughtful corners of the NBA commentariat. None of these questions about the in-season tournament (formally, the Emirates NBA Cup) are misguided. Traditions take time to develop. The issue, though, is that the framing of the Cup discourse compares it to the NBA finals, which are the ultimate payoff after a long season. In reality, it makes more sense to think about the Cup as comparable to the All-Star game: a chance to see match-ups and contests between players who wouldn’t normally face each other on such a large platform, the opportunity for up-and-comers to make a mark, and a competition with low enough actual stakes that pride is more at risk than actual team records. For all these reasons, the Wizards front office should make a deep NBA cup run one of its benchmarks for assessing the team’s ongoing rebuild.
How will we know when the rebuild is over? The Sixers Process has very much run its course and it almost seems like they are exciting despite their tank rather than because of it. People point to Oklahoma City’s two-ish years in the wilderness as a successful tank job, but this also doesn’t feel particularly instructive. Unlike the Wizards, their cap sheet and organization were already set up for success. Ownership had long been bought in to winning and developing in a way that favored long term thinking over adding a handful of wins with over-priced, injury prone contracts. If the Wizards are able to grow and develop through the draft, it could take years to get to the point where they are positioned for a deep playoff run. The NBA Cup, in contrast, is built into the season in a way that differs from the post-season gauntlet.
The past two NBA Cups have shown that the prior season’s league finals contenders are often dealing with injuries, which leaves an opening for the next tier of teams. The Knicks benefitted from the general lack of tendons and soft tissue in Boston and Indiana on this front. The Magic’s run is a good model for the Wizards. A young team that catches a few breaks, has a strong core, and defeats an awkward Heat team in the quarterfinals. It’s not exactly a Cinderella story, but it is a story and one that is specific to the Magic, which is more than the Wizards have at the moment. Or at least a better one than they have, which is to bottom out and draft high in tandem with all the other teams bottoming out and trying to draft high.
Monumental Basketball president Michael Winger, General Manager Will Dawkins, and Coach Brian Keefe can’t promise that there will be an All Star on the team in 2026. They can’t realistically promise a championship next year or the year after (or really, the year after that). Becoming an All Star requires a mix of celebrity, talent, and winning as a team while also putting up individual numbers that force national media to pay attention, plus a mix of luck across each of these categories. Plenty of great players never make it to an All Star game, plenty of injured stars still get voted in based on past success and name recognition. Guys like CJ McCollum have great careers without getting to hang out with the league elite for a weekend.
In one of his last poems, Raymond Chandler writes:
And did you get what
you wanted from this life, even so?
I did.
And what did you want?
To call myself beloved, to feel myself
beloved on the earth.
This is lovely as a poem. But terrible as a strategy for a basketball team. Yet, much of the talk about stacking days, improving defense, and trying to not be last or near last in most team stats reads more like that poem and less like a way to gauge progress. Have we gotten what we want from the rebuild? It’s too soon to say. But what do Keefe or Winger or Dawkins want? To get better, sure. But what specifically?
Setting the team’s sights on the NBA Cup will please everyone and no one. It’s perfect. If you think the Cup is a lame attempt to sell jerseys and drive early season hype, then setting a Cup goal should not distract from the main goal of, uh, whatever happens at the end of a rebuild. If you think the Cup is fun, it is a goal that will prepare the Wizards for post-season play down the line. If the Heat and Raptors can slip into the quarterfinals this season, the Wizards should be able to make it next season or the season after. I’m not looking for anyone to get fired—not in this economy!—but setting the Cup as a benchmark is at least a way to figure out if the plan, whatever it might be beyond “winning,” is working. Without this, injuries or statistical cherry picking or the promise of yet another young prospect worth tanking for will mean the current liminal state can continue apace.
Who knows what will happen with the in-season tournament? I would love to see the league truly treat it like the All Star game and experiment even more. Let G-League teams compete in it or foreign teams or college teams to get something closer to relegation and promotion. Even if NBA commissioner Adam Silver keeps the Cup as-is, the only way it will garner respect and become something that matters is if teams treat it as such. The Wizards have an opportunity to lead in how the Cup is viewed. To paraphrase Mario Cuomo’s line, team leadership has been planning in poetry, it’s time to move to prose.