By The Ringer StaffDec. 18, 2:11 pm UTC • 9 min

Like so many trips to Las Vegas, the 2024 NBA Cup didn’t end with a bang so much as an extended yawn and a realization that everyone really needs to get home. Fueled by a triple-double from Giannis Antetokounmpo and some god-awful 3-point shooting by his opponents, the Milwaukee Bucks overwhelmed the Oklahoma City Thunder in a forgettable 97-81 rout in Tuesday’s title game.

Was the final game a reflection of the Cup product overall? Or did the NBA’s in-season tournament make strides in its second year? The Ringer NBA staff gathered to examine the Cup’s future and the ripple effects from this year’s final. Plus, our thoughts on the legitimacy of Giannis’s MVP push, the Thunder’s title chances, and which non-Cup story line we’re now turning our attention to.

What is your tweet-length review of the 2024 NBA Cup overall?

Justin Verrier: If you save your /thread on the 37 ways to fix the Cup to drafts and actually watch the games, you’ll realize the Cup is pretty good.

Howard Beck: I saw nothing to make me change my mind about the whole concept—I remain a skeptical agnostic. But it was nice to see Giannis so amped and cool to see Dame Lillard at last win something. Or, if I may paraphrase the great Frank Drebin: “No matter how silly the idea of having an NBA Cup might be, we must be gracious and considerate.”

Michael Pina: As someone who already enjoyed watching regular-season NBA games before the NBA Cup was invented, I’m happy for everyone who gets something out of it! 

Zach Kram: I’m glad the Cup exists and believe in its potential. But Adam Silver’s office is still ironing out the kinks and needs to make more tweaks to his pet project to gain real momentum in the years to come.

Tyler Parker: It’s still not really a thing. Certainly, it exists, and absolutely, sometimes it’s even fun, but it isn’t cool yet. It doesn’t matter yet. It is something they made up. The basketball was good. The pageantry was not. Some essential juice is missing. It will never feel as special as they want it to because they cannot manufacture tradition. 

Danny Chau:

What is your biggest takeaway from the title game?

Verrier: That Giannis is the second- and maybe even 1b-most dominant player in the league. For all the consternation and existential crises that came from their past two playoff flameouts, the Bucks’ biggest issue was rather simple: Giannis was injured. A healthy Antetokounmpo probably wouldn’t have been enough for a Finals run in either case, but he showed Tuesday night that he can paper over plenty of roster flaws with brute force. The Thunder have been a buzzsaw all season, but their swarming, swiping small-ball units looked feeble against Giannis’s barnstorms toward the rim. Milwaukee still has loads of problems—starting with the fact that it looked better without Khris Middleton (who missed the final with an illness) than it did with him against the Hawks on Saturday—but having the best player in an elimination game can still take you a long way.

Beck: That Giannis is on a freakin’ mission. But that’s been evident for a while now, Cup or no Cup. He’s watched Nikola Jokic steal the mythical Best Player Alive belt, watched the Celtics seize power, and watched everyone fall in love with young upstarts like the Thunder and Cavs. The dude clearly has had enough. The Bucks have their flaws, but Giannis is putting them firmly back in contention.

Pina: Not to be simple and reduce the game’s outcome to poor 3-point shooting—or treat that part of the game like some inevitably random variable that isn’t at all affected by defensive ball pressure, physicality, or effort all over the floor—but my biggest takeaway is that the Thunder can’t win if they shoot like this. Oklahoma City took 32 3s and missed 27 of them. That’s the fourth-least accurate performance any team that’s attempted at least 30 3s has had this season. If this were Game 1 in a best-of-seven series, OKC would not be nervous. So let’s not overreact here. If nothing else, it was a reminder that anything can happen in a single 48-minute game.

Kram: Like Michael said, it’s hard to win an NBA game in 2024 when you shoot 5-32 on 3-pointers. This season, teams shooting worse than 20 percent from distance are now 1-20, with 17 of those losses coming by double digits.

Parker: It’s a tie between (1) we still underrate Giannis and (2) OKC needs another shooter. They need a can’t-dare-to-leave-him-open kind of guy. But going back to point no. 1, Giannis truly is New Shaq. It’s physicality and athleticism and a thirst for good ol’-fashioned domination. You can’t stop him with one man. Even five aren’t enough. 

Chau: Cam Johnson seems like a future Thunder player—and it might only be a matter of time before he’s on the team. Last season’s deadline was a massive missed opportunity for the Thunder, who opted to trade for the husk of Gordon Hayward (who was months away from retiring from professional basketball) instead of making a bigger splash when the team was clearly on the cusp of contention. Now that they’re front-runners, there’s no choice but to start reallocating assets from the most enviable treasure chest in the league. They need shooting and size at the wing. Johnson, in the midst of a career year, is a perfect fit. 

Who is more likely to beat the Celtics in the 2025 playoffs: the Bucks or Thunder?

Verrier: The Thunder. They need to figure out a more consistent source of secondary offense so that they’re not as reliant on monster nights from Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but their lack of frontcourt size shouldn’t be as much of an issue when Chet Holmgren and Jaylin Williams are back on the court. Now, if either big man hits a road bump in his recovery, that’s a different story, especially since Sam Presti has been reluctant to acquire short-term upgrades that block the paths of his prized draft picks. But OKC is perhaps the only team in the league with the depth of perimeter defenders to stymie Boston’s bombs-away offense.

Beck: The Bucks have the talent and size to stress out the Celtics—wearing them down just enough to leave them vulnerable to the younger, deeper, sprier Thunder in the Finals.

Pina: The Thunder, easily. They have one of the best defenses I’ve ever seen, a versatile, cagey, razor-sharp group that rotates in tandem, protects the rim, forces a ton of turnovers, and regularly makes the walls close in on five-out offenses that are accustomed to enjoying ample space. (Also: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander.)

Kram: The Thunder, and I don’t think it’s all that close. Sure, the Bucks held OKC to 81 points on Tuesday, but I have no faith in the ability of Milwaukee’s perimeter defenders to corral Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Derrick White, Jrue Holiday, and Payton Pritchard four times in a series, while the Thunder’s roster is perfectly constructed to do so. I don’t even think Milwaukee has the best chance of any Eastern Conference team to dethrone the champs.

Parker: The Thunder. The final was an outlier shooting game for OKC, and they have the talent to at least make Boston uncomfortable on the perimeter. The Thunder also have the athletes to run with the Celtics and scramble better than any other defense in the league. 

Chau: Look, it was a truly unfortunate showing on national television, but I’ll still go with the Thunder here—especially if they make the proper roster adjustments in the weeks ahead. 

What change would you make to the Cup in 2025?

Verrier: I forgot which pseudo–Cup commissioner suggested this, but I really like the idea of playing only Cup games, without normal regular-season games interspersed, during the group stage. The games have legitimate juice once the schedule pivots to knockout play, but the tournament is impossible to follow before then. Pick a simple format—say, just make the groups the existing divisions?—and play only those games over two weeks, then move on to single-game elimination. While we’re at it, lose point differentials as a tiebreaker (this isn’t soccer; just use regular-season records) and pick one goddamn jersey for each team. 

Beck: Two things: (1) The group play games should happen consecutively, rather than being awkwardly spread out (two nights per week) over multiple weeks. There’s no momentum or sense of drama until you get to the knockout round. (2) No more games in Vegas (or any neutral sites). There’s zero energy for the biggest games of the tournament. Play them in home markets.

Pina: In short, it’s too confusing. I am paid to follow this stuff and had no idea which teams were in what groups. Make it less random.

Kram: I write about the NBA professionally. I think about the league every day. Yet, throughout the entire month of November, I still needed regular reminders of which teams played in which Cup groups. Just split the teams by division, embrace existing rivalries, and call it a day!

Parker: No more neutral courts. I understand they’ve really thrown their weight behind making it a trip to Vegas, but even when the basketball’s good, the energy in the arena doesn’t compare to what it’d be like with a team playing at home.

Chau: I would deepen the lore of the Michael Imperioli–led TV spots. Have him serve as a shadowy chairman figure, like in Iron Chef. Clone him; make the viewer have to guess which Imperioli is the dharma practitioner and which is the morally bankrupt cipher. And I guess I would make the Cup’s group stage a dedicated two-week tournament during the season to create a greater sense of immersion—no more wondering whether it’s a Cup Tuesday or Friday.   

What non-Cup NBA story line are you excited to lock back into?

Verrier: How will the Nuggets salvage the roster they’ve put around the player who’s having one of the best individual seasons in history? As exhilarating as Jokic’s start has been, there’s legitimate concern that he’ll die on his feet playing such heavy minutes. Denver has to do something, but desperate is a bad place to be in the trade market. Jokic needs bodies—capable, league-average rotation players—just to pace himself, but recent reports have the Nugs linked to … Zach Lavine, whom the Bulls haven’t been able to give away because of his poor injury history. Something’s gotta change, and it’s not a stretch to suggest that whatever decision Calvin Booth makes will decide the fate of the remainder of Jokic’s prime.

Beck: Can the Sixers get healthy and salvage their season? Can the Warriors land one more piece to help Steph? Will the Lakers do anything at all to support their (soon-to-be) 40-year-old superstar—or is LeBron doomed to another meaningless spring?

Pina: Everything about the Western Conference standings, which are already extremely tight and unpredictable. Right now the Memphis Grizzlies have the 2-seed but are only 4.5 games up on the 11th-place San Antonio Spurs, a .500 team. Every game feels important, stakes are real, and pretty much every team involved is formidable when healthy. 

Kram: I’m a sicko who wants to monitor the Wizards’ pursuit of the worst season in NBA history. They’re on pace for a 10-72 record (the 82-game record is 9-73) and a negative-15.9 point differential (the record is negative-15.2). Those numbers will probably improve because the Wizards have the NBA’s easiest remaining schedule but I’ll have to see some more Wizards wins before I’ll believe it.

Parker: The Grizzlies’ contender status. They show all the signs of a squad that will be a load to handle come playoff time. Can they stay healthy long enough to make a serious run at this thing? I hope so. The league is fun when they’re good. 

Chau: Excited isn’t exactly the word, but for what feels like the 15th consecutive season, the Chicago Bulls have a very obvious path forward as deadline sellers. This is notable because, year after year, the organization keeps finding novel ways to lock itself back into the worst possible team-building situation. Is this the year the Bulls finally relinquish their place in purgatory? Or are they about to find yet another route to nowhere?