NBA Cup winners and losers: Damian Lillard hoists a trophy, Thunder offense scuffles, Hawks show their promise

The NBA Cup has come and gone, and officially, we have a winner. The Milwaukee Bucks defeated the Oklahoma City Thunder 97-81 in the NBA Cup’s championship game, giving the In-Season Tournament its second champion following the Los Angeles Lakers a season ago, but that doesn’t mean the event had only one winner.

No, the NBA Cup’s effects will be felt throughout the season and extend far beyond the Thunder and Bucks. All 30 teams participated after all, and most of them can credibly take something away from the experience. So let’s take a look at the tournament as a whole and pick some winners and losers going all the way back to the group play. 

As impressive as Milwaukee’s run to the NBA Cup title was, I think we can be honest about where the Bucks stand in the NBA’s hierarchy as a whole. Based on their overall body of work thus far, it is unlikely that they are going to add the Larry O’Brien Trophy to their Cup victory. For most of the Bucks, that’s not the end of the world. The roster’s core won one back in 2021, so players like Giannis Antetokounmpo, Brook Lopez, Khris Middleton and Bobby Portis wouldn’t have lost much sleep over a lost NBA Cup. But Damian Lillard wasn’t a Buck back in 2021.

As this is Lillard’s age 34 season, we are creeping closer and closer to the possibility that he retires without ever winning an end-of-season NBA championship. On a simple, human level, it’s nice to see an all-time legend hoist a trophy on an NBA court even if it’s not necessarily the trophy he’d prefer. We’d obviously rather see him win one in June, but one of the nice things about this tournament is that it presents an admittedly smaller alternative. It’s something, and there was a very real chance that, at least where championships were concerned, Lillard was on his way to retiring with nothing.

Loser: Oklahoma City’s offense

Oklahoma City’s offense isn’t exactly bad. It’s currently ranked No. 8 in the NBA, and even the worst teams don’t shoot below 20% from 3-point range all that often. The Thunder are, generally, fine on offense, especially in the context of having the NBA’s stingiest defense. What the NBA Cup run did largely do, though, was reinforce an idea that emerged during the playoffs last season, that Oklahoma City’s offense is a bit one-note.

The goal for the Thunder offensively is to watch Shai Gilgeous-Alexander create advantages, and use those advantages to drill wide-open 3s. It’s gorgeous when it’s working, but the Thunder don’t have too many other win conditions. The Isaiah Hartenstein flip shot is a nice end-of-clock curveball and getting Chet Holmgren back from injury will help in this respect. But compare their secondary creators to other championship contenders and they come up lacking. 

Jalen Williams is much more of a play-finisher. Hartenstein and Holmgren are big men with most of the accompanying limitations. The bulk of the role players are of the 3-and-D variety. It would really help the Thunder to have someone else on this team capable of creating consistent advantages. They didn’t have a viable pivot on offense Tuesday, and that’s why they didn’t hoist the cup in Las Vegas.

No team outperformed expectations in the tournament like the Hawks, and their performance in pursuit of the NBA Cup trophy was emblematic of their season overall. 

The Hawks were supposed to be a bit of a mess this season. They traded one of their best players, Dejounte Murray, over the summer, but without control over their next three first-round picks, they couldn’t rebuild properly. That left them with an awkward mishmash of youngsters and veterans with no clear timeline or vision. Quin Snyder made lemonade with his lemons, and the Hawks have emerged as one of this season’s most delightful surprises. 

Their deep group of athletic wings has given Trae Young both the defensive protection and assist targets he needed to flourish with Murray gone. Dyson Daniels has emerged as a Defensive Player of the Year candidate. Jalen Johnson has a second chance to win Most Improved Player after just barely failing to qualify a year ago. The Hawks stunned the Celtics, Cavaliers and Knicks this season to reach Vegas, and they are 5-1 against those teams overall on the season. 

Atlanta might not quite be ready for a June championship run yet, but their NBA Cup performance showed the basketball world just how promising this team is.

Golden State has a reasonable gripe with the way it was knocked out of the NBA Cup. Yes, Jonathan Kuminga fouled Jalen Green by the letter of the law. It’s just that the law in question is rarely enforced. Fouls could reasonably called in almost any floor fight for a loose ball, but officials tend to simply call a jump ball and let the players themselves solve possession organically. Bill Kennedy just made the unusual decision to whistle for a foul early. 

And not only did that cost Golden State a trip to Las Vegas, but it also set them up with an extra difficult game. Klay Thompson and the Dallas Mavericks traveled to San Francisco to play and ultimately defeat the Warriors on Sunday in a game that was scheduled to get the Warriors up to 82 on the season. It’s only a single game, and the Warriors already have plenty of trophies to their name, but still, their Cup experience was about as negative as it gets.

Winner: Youth

Yes, the NBA Cup hasn’t been exclusively the domain of young teams. The Bucks and last year’s Lakers are proof enough of that. But think about what sort of teams we saw succeed in this tournament compared to who we expect to last deep into the actual postseason. The Hawks are young. The Thunder are young. The Rockets are young. The Magic, who themselves could have made it to Vegas had Franz Wagner or Paolo Banchero been able to play in the quarterfinals, are young. These are the teams that ultimately benefitted from the experience. 

Among those teams, only the Thunder are widely considered a serious championship contender, and those who doubt them in May and June will likely point to experience as a reason why. Well, games like this will only help get them ready for May and June faster. Anything is possible in a single-elimination setting. And by introducing one to the regular season, it gave these young teams a chance to play high-leverage basketball that will hopefully prove beneficial to them when it counts in the spring.

Loser: Thunder and Bucks

Let’s call them potential losers. After all, they are the tournament’s big winners in practice. But remember, both the Lakers and Pacers struggled in the aftermath of last year’s tournament. “Have you seen Indiana’s record since Vegas?” LeBron James quipped after a particularly tough loss. Both the Lakers went 2-6 in the immediate aftermath of their December trip to Vegas. That’s not exactly a reliable sample, but it makes sense on its face. They had to emotionally peak relatively early in the season, and then jump right back into playing regular games. 

It’s understandable that such whiplash would affect them for a few weeks, and that’s one of the overall downsides to this event. It asks teams to build part of their season around a tournament that ultimately does not matter in the chase for the Larry O’Brien trophy. Playoff positioning will be significant for both the Thunder and the Bucks, and if they struggle after Vegas like the Lakers and Pacers did, they’ll both be left wondering if this trip was worthwhile.