The importance of winning the NBA Cup, ranked by contender

The NBA Cup knockout round is upon us. Who would actually benefit the most from winning the tournament?

Good morning. Let's basketball.

The NBA Cup quarterfinals are set for Tuesday and Wednesday, with the semifinals to follow on Saturday and the championship game in a week. Eight teams remain. A title would be nice for any of them: there's a check attached, and winning is always better than losing when it comes to mood, ego and pride.

But the eight teams all have somewhat different upside and motivations here. So let's rank the remaining teams in terms of what it would mean to win the Cup.

8. Lakers

Los Angeles won the inaugural Cup and has designs on the real championship. Beating the Thunder in an elimination game would feel real nice, without question, and perhaps put some fear into OKC. But being a two-time Cup winner with a single Finals trip in LeBron's Lakers era would quite possibly end up being a joke in the end.

7. Heat

Miami has won real championships – albeit not in more than a decade – and a couple of the current players have been to the Finals with this franchise. So it's hard to imagine the team super geeked for a Cup run. But then again, these players are widely likeable and the team's a bunch of fun. It could be a really nice cap for Erik Spoelstra's early Coach of the Year candidacy.

6. Thunder

The motivation here is in running the table in the Cup after last season's blowout loss to the Bucks and winning every trophy available for the taking for a string of years. I imagine it's hard to find extra motivation after winning an NBA championship, but then again the Thunder are 23-1 and smoking opponents. Maybe they don't even need motivation?

5. Suns

After the disaster of last season, and for a team without any remote near-term title designs, this would be a helluva victory lap for the reformed strategy and roster. Remember when Phoenix ripped through the bubble, setting up the Chris Paul trade and a Finals run? Treat the Cup like the bubble! Make it matter going forward. (While I have them fifth on the list, I am rooting for Phoenix to run it. Make the Cup a little weirder.)

4. Raptors

A Cup championship feels unlikely given Toronto's recent swoon, but the Raptors have some decent upside in a disheveled East and with belief wavering this could be just the jelly to get the program back on track and aimed for the sky. If the locker room is feeling queasy, this could be just the jelly Darko Rajakovic needs.

3. Magic

This is a perfect spot for a team with some reasonable Finals hopes to test their own mettle in high-pressure situations. Franz Wagner will unfortunately miss the proceedings after a great start to the season – he's out 2-4 weeks with an ankle sprain after the nasty spill the other night – but the vibes have been improving along with the record and Desmond Bane's stat lines. The league office has to love the idea of a young, rising team taking the crown in a statement game.

2. Knicks

The league office probably loves the idea of the Knicks in the championship game even more. It's rude but true. In any case, New York has legitimate Finals hopes this season and no cleaner path imaginable. This is an excellent opportunity for a proof point as the Knicks ready for another long postseason. They also happen to be the favorite in the East bracket – a weird position for this franchise this century – and so losing before the championship game could be seen as a weird knock against their hopes in the spring. Maybe a loss to Toronto or one of the Florida teams makes it more likely they make a mid-stream move for Giannis.

1. Spurs

San Antonio is smokin' hot without Victor Wembanyama; he returned to practice this week and there's no news yet on whether he'll play Wednesday. Stephon Castle is back, too, and Dylan Harper is hitting game-winners and De'Aaron Fox is back at an All-Star level. For a young, confident team – perhaps the only franchise with near-term hopes of derailing the Thunder, other than the Celtics – winning the Cup could be a huge, epoch-shaping moment. Or it could be a blip in the era of the Thunder. In any case, while Lakers-Thunder in the semis is alluring for its spring connotations, Spurs-Thunder is a moment in the making.

Scores

Kings 105, Pacers 116 – Reader A.J. sent an email to ask what, since the Pacers historically are not interested in tanking, Indiana will do the rest of the season, and whether the playoffs are still possible. The Pacers are 5-5 in their last 10, largely aligning with the injury returns of Bennedict Mathurin and Andrew Nembhard. Is the 1-13 hole the team started in just two deep to overcome?

My answer is yes: these Pacers aren't quite good enough to make up all those games they dropped in October and early November. I pegged them as a .500-ish team this season coming in, but the injury bug hit hard early on. Starting 1-13 and going .500 for the rest of the season puts them at 35-47. That winning percentage would be No. 10 in the East right now. A record that bad hasn't made the postseason – play-in or playoffs – in the East in at least 20 years. So the Pacers would need to be better than .500 the rest of the way, probably by several games, just to hit the play-in.

What's the upside? Tyrese Haliburton has been firm that he won't play this season (unlike Jayson Tatum, who was injured earlier and has been more coy). Indiana isn't ever going to set healthy players and try to be awful. But my take is that the Pacers will continue to be cautious with injuries and isn't likely to be much better than .500 – if that – when it all shakes out. Should Pascal Siakam go down at any point, or the guard lineup get wrecked again, it's a losing streak waiting to happen. I'm struggling to see the opposite, circumstances which result in a run well above .500 for an extended period.

Anyways, the Pacers without Haliburton are clearly better than the Kings without Domantas Sabonis.

Suns 108, Timberwolves 105 – Big road win for Phoenix to end Minnesota's quiet win streak. The Wolves continue to toss in an inexplicable loss every once in a while to keep it spicy; hosting the Suns sans Devin Booker while at full strength and losing because you can't contain Collin Gillespie or Mark Williams is rather Wolvesian. Collin Gillespie just loves destroying the Wolves, doesn't he?

Rudy Gobert is quietly one of the dirtiest players in the league. This elbow is nasty work.

Spurs 135, Pelicans 132 – Wow! Derik Queen with a new career-best performance, giving Luke Kornet the business all night. He did everything but hit the game-winner. The rare rookie 30-point triple-double.

Who did get the game-winner? One of the other big rookies in the game: the Spurs' Dylan Harper. Also a career night for him.

He's not as strong and maybe a touch quicker, but his movement patterns and focus on getting into the paint reminds me a lot of Cade Cunningham. Special prospect.

Spurs win again without Victor Wembanyama. The Pels fall to 3-22. No team started this poorly last season. (The Wizards are 3-19, so three more consecutive losses will get them there.) For reference, the Pelicans started 5-20 last season and finished No. 14 in the West.

Links

Great point from Henry Abbott that I haven't seen elsewhere: the Clippers are mired in scandal, and Chris Paul is not someone who goes with the flow, and if Ty Lue (whose best friend Chauncey Billups is mired in a different scandal) and Lawrence Frank and Steve Ballmer are feeling beset upon, having someone ruffling feathers in the house is not a fun time.

Mike Sykes on the state of sneaker culture and the industry.

Kelly Dwyer on Giannis. Katie Heindl on betrayal. Dan Devine on what survival without Giannis means for the Bucks.

Marc Stein on how Ryan Nembhard became a Maverick and quickly then became a starter.

Tom Haberstroh on Tyrese Maxey's steady stardom.

John Schuhmann's Power Rankings, which include a meteoric rise for the Celtics.

Speaking of which, here's Paul Flannery on where the Celtics go from here.

Tyler Parker's quarter-mark League Pass Awards.

The Cavaliers

Yes, I said on Monday I planned to write about them for Tuesday. Thus continues my streak of saying I'm going to write about things and then putting it off. Need to watch a bit of their recent games. Soon.

Schedule

Knockout Night No. 1.

Heat at Magic, 6 ET, Prime Video
Knicks at Raptors, 8:30 ET, Prime Video

Be excellent to each other.