So the most anticipated sports tournament of the Fall got started last night: The NBA Cup. Teams are put into ‘Groups’ that aren’t the same as their divisions, they play random games throughout November and December that count as regular season games but also count toward group standings, and it all culminates in Las Vegas in the middle of December where they will crown an NBA Cup champion. The winners get some extra money on their game check and it has literally no impact on the playoffs or the NBA Finals. Oh, and the stats in Vegas don’t count toward anyone’s season totals for some reason. Whoo hoo!
Anyway, for the second straight season, the NBA has asked teams to play on a different floor for NBA Cup games. That way fans can differentiate from not caring about NBA Cup games and not caring about November regular season games.
This is what the Bucks went with, and here are some blue gifs:
Not a gif but I was dying laughing at this meme on Twitter last night:
Related: The Bucks actually won a game! Maybe they really do only care about ‘The Cup.’
A few things in no particular order about this mess of a start:
- Remember when I wrote that blog before the season started about how this is going to be a revenge tour for the Bucks and they’re going to shove it in all of the doubters faces?? LOL.
- I fundamentally don’t understand why it’s taken this long to get AJ Green and AJax rotational minutes. They proved last season that they are something the Bucks don’t have a lot of: Young talent with upside. No reason they shouldn’t be getting 20-30 minutes every night for the rest of the season.
- ^Related: We haven’t seen much of Ryan Rollins but I like what I’ve seen so far. Knocked down 4 3’s last night and had 5 steals.
- It is clear at this point that the Bucks hung on FAR too long to pieces of that 2021 title team. Pat C’s best days are behind him, and Bobby’s defense is best described by this gif:
- We can relitigate the firing of Bud at some other time, but they made the wrong choice with Adrian Griffin and then got stuck where they basically had to hire Doc to a multi-year deal because they fired Griff mid-season. I’m not saying it can’t change, I hope it does, but so far Doc isn’t looking like he’s it either. 20-27 record through 47 games.
- The 2000-01 Bucks started the year 3-9 and went on to go 52-30 and then got screwed out of a Finals trip by David Stern. All is not lost in mid-November.
I said on the podcast on Monday that by Friday’s pod the Bucks need to be 4-8. It wasn’t pretty by any stretch but they got to 3-8 after last night’s win, now they need to win again against a surprisingly improved Pistons team on the second night of a back-to-back.
PS: The NBA Cup is so fetch.
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