2024 NBA Cup

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bigbailes said:
It's 'fake' because this is just a drummed up way for the league to try and get a few extra eyeballs during football season. If it holds over a few decades and becomes a part of the fabric of the league, then it might be looked on differently but just feels really gimmicky right now.
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One of the biggest things I like about the Cup is it gets "playoff atmosphere" experience for young players. Especially if the team can make it past the group stage. There's not much opportunities for these types of games, it can often take 5 years or more for young players on rebuilding teams to get a single game of that experience.
 
Our next cup game against Houston will be exciting, if Blazers can win we would have a legit chance to win our group.

The other 4 teams in our group play tonight. We want Minnesota to win out because we have the tiebreaker over them.

So if Houston wins tonight, and Minny wins, then we beat Houston next Friday we could have a commanding lead in our group. We'd be only 2-0 team with two teams at 1-1 we own tiebreakers over.
 
Were obviously not going to make the playoffs or playin this year, nor win the final of this cup.

But just playing our last cup games where they have more meaning to advance, plus potentially an extra game in the next cup round will be great experience for our youth, if we can win 1 more.

Those games will have something on the line for Sharpe/Clingan/Camara to get some "playoff" type of experience, which previously never happens in normal regular season games.
 
2 of the 3 things that ideally would happen for us I posted 12 hours ago did happen. Houston beating the Clippers and the Wolves beating the Kings tonight.

If the Blazers can somehow pull out a win at Houston next Friday we'll have a huge lead in the cup!

Would be awesome to make the next cup round and then eventually get a top5 pick both in the same season.
 
Early standings for this are really interesting if you look at the East.

ORL, DET, NY, ATL

Could be this early that we see the tournament as somewhat meaningless when there’s such a small sample size compared to the entire season.

Portland being 1-0 is in there too… Imagine an in season tournament between teams that don’t even make the playoffs.

ORL and NY can make the top 10 in the East, but still.
 
PDXFonz said:
Early standings for this are really interesting if you look at the East.

ORL, DET, NY, ATL

Could be this early that we see the tournament as somewhat meaningless when there’s such a small sample size compared to the entire season.

Portland being 1-0 is in there too… Imagine an in season tournament between teams that don’t even make the playoffs.

ORL and NY can make the top 10 in the East, but still.
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The Lakers won last year, and based on their season that should be all the evidence we need that it’s a joke
 
PDXFonz said:
Early standings for this are really interesting if you look at the East.

ORL, DET, NY, ATL

Could be this early that we see the tournament as somewhat meaningless when there’s such a small sample size compared to the entire season.

Portland being 1-0 is in there too… Imagine an in season tournament between teams that don’t even make the playoffs.

ORL and NY can make the top 10 in the East, but still.
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The NBA playoffs is a grind for months and months where teams that are clearly superior always advance.

A single elimination quick tournament is a crap shoot where any team can win. We're still going to see better teams win more often, but we'll see tons of bad teams advance too. That's what makes it exciting and great, it's basically a match madness style NBA tournament that can have Cinderella teams and huge upsets you'd never see in the playoffs.

5-10 years from now it'll start having some history and become way more significant.

If I were running the NBA I'd consider giving the cup winner an automatic playoff birth and the runner up a playin spot. We'll see how this ultimately shakes out, they can only do so many changes at a time.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
The NBA playoffs is a grind for months and months where teams that are clearly superior always advance.

A single elimination quick tournament is a crap shoot where any team can win. We're still going to see better teams win more often, but we'll see tons of bad teams advance too. That's what makes it exciting and great, it's basically a match madness style NBA tournament that can have Cinderella teams and huge upsets you'd never see in the playoffs.

5-10 years from now it'll start having some history and become way more significant.

If I were running the NBA I'd consider giving the cup winner an automatic playoff birth and the runner up a playin spot. We'll see how this ultimately shakes out, they can only do so many changes at a time.
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now we’re talking. Teams that suffer mid to late season injuries to stars shouldn’t be penalized. Reward early season winners too.

the playins are already a borderline joke, mine as well mix them up
 
PDXFonz said:
Early standings for this are really interesting if you look at the East.

ORL, DET, NY, ATL

Could be this early that we see the tournament as somewhat meaningless when there’s such a small sample size compared to the entire season.

Portland being 1-0 is in there too… Imagine an in season tournament between teams that don’t even make the playoffs.

ORL and NY can make the top 10 in the East, but still.
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Orlando is 3rd in the East
 
Friday cup game at Houston will be the biggest Blazers game since we lost to Denver in the playoffs!

Will be epic if we can somehow pull that win off. We'll then likely have the ability to win any one of the final two cup games to make the next round due to owning tiebreakers over Minnesota and Houston.

Really excited to see Sharpe, Camara, Clingan, Timelord, and Banton playing in some more meaningful games with higher stakes.
 
Had a bunch of cup games last night, although none from our group. Did have OKC lose in San Antonio which helps us as they have to fly home to play the 2nd of a B2B tonight while we were already in hotel rooms resting. Here are the cup standings for our group;

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Tiebreaker is first head to head so the winner of us vs Houston will have a commanding lead in our group.
Second tiebreaker is point differential. Probably only comes into play if we lose to Houston but all three of us/Hou/MIN finish 3-1 or something. Also point differential could come into play if we are 3-1 but lose the group as it would be the tie breaker for the 4th wildcard seed from group B/group C. Or if we win our group point differential could determine us having a home vs road game against group B/group C winners to advance to Vegas.

Probably just comes down to this Houston game Friday. We win and we are likely the group A favorites, we'd be 2-0 while owning tiebreakers over both the Rockets and Wolves. Would make our Kings or Clippers games super meaningful closeout games - and great experience for our youth.

Going to be extremely hard to win in Houston Friday. This is the biggest Blazers game since we played Denver in the playoffs.
 

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Heard the BlazerSurprise youtube guys overlook this, but point differential is only based on regulation, OT doesn't count. So OT games all count as 0 point differential regardless of the final score. The NBA didnt want a situation where a team was incentivized to sabotaged their own win to force overtime if that would better run up their point differential.
 
Kings vs Clippers also play Friday in our group.

The looking way too far ahead scenario - if both us and the Kings win Friday, we can then clinch our group with a win over the Kings on black Friday.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Heard the BlazerSurprise youtube guys overlook this, but point differential is only based on regulation, OT doesn't count. So OT games all count as 0 point differential regardless of the final score. The NBA didnt want a situation where a team was incentivized to sabotaged their own win to force overtime if that would better run up their point differential.
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It cracks me up every time you call them the BlazerSurprise guys. I love it.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Had a bunch of cup games last night, although none from our group. Did have OKC lose in San Antonio which helps us as they have to fly home to play the 2nd of a B2B tonight while we were already in hotel rooms resting. Here are the cup standings for our group;

View attachment 67878

Tiebreaker is first head to head so the winner of us vs Houston will have a commanding lead in our group.
Second tiebreaker is point differential. Probably only comes into play if we lose to Houston but all three of us/Hou/MIN finish 3-1 or something. Also point differential could come into play if we are 3-1 but lose the group as it would be the tie breaker for the 4th wildcard seed from group B/group C. Or if we win our group point differential could determine us having a home vs road game against group B/group C winners to advance to Vegas.

Probably just comes down to this Houston game Friday. We win and we are likely the group A favorites, we'd be 2-0 while owning tiebreakers over both the Rockets and Wolves. Would make our Kings or Clippers games super meaningful closeout games - and great experience for our youth.

Going to be extremely hard to win in Houston Friday. This is the biggest Blazers game since we played Denver in the playoffs.
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How frickin' sad is that?
 
Last nights Rockets blowout ends the Blazers cup chances. Next Blazers things to root for are:

1 Feb trade deadline
2 May Draft lottery
3 June Draft
4 July free agency
5 ~Sep 2025 cup schedule released
 
SharpesTriumph said:
Last nights Rockets blowout ends the Blazers cup chances. Next Blazers things to root for are:

1 Feb trade deadline
2 May Draft lottery
3 June Draft
4 July free agency
5 ~Sep 2025 cup schedule released
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So many Tanks this year!
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We still have a chance. If we win and OKC, Dallas and Phoenix lose, we will be the West wildcard. Or if one of those teams win, we need a blowout win over the Clippers.
 
We probably have a fraction of less than 1% of a chance. Simplest path is Dallas and OKC both lose and each have two losses. Suns play the Spurs so in that case the winner gets group B and the loser would have 2 losses below us. Then we can win and get 4th seed west wildcard.

Dallas might lose against Memphis. But OKC is playing at home over Utah and is 13.5 point favorites so seems extremely unlikely they will lose. Currently Blazers are -5 point differential (differential is tie breaker if teams did not play cup head to head in same group)

1. If OKC wins and Spurs Win..... Spurs would win Group B (beat Thunder head to head). Thunder are currently +18 - so we would need to win by 24 more points than the Thunder do. Very unlikely.
2. If OKC wins and Suns win..... Thunder would win Group B (beat Suns head to head). Suns are currently +19 so we would need to win by 25 more points than the Suns do. Very unlikely.
3. There is no scenario that Dallas wins and we get into the cup as Dallas point differential is +41. We'd need to win by ~47 point more than them lol.

The Dallas and OKC games will be nearly complete when we tipoff so will know by game time.
 
One kind of odd thing with the cup.... is the teams that get into it then play 2 regular season cup games against fellow cup teams which are stronger opponents, and may even lose a home game (play 40 home games and 42 road games as the Knicks last year).

The teams that don't advance in the cup would then play those 2 regular season games against non cup teams that should be weaker opponents while guaranteed 41 home games.

So if the teams primary intention was to maximize regular season wins would they prefer to have a lower point differential at the end and get eliminated from the cup in order to make those 2 regular season games easier opponents? It's an odd dynamic.
 
SharpesTriumph said:
One kind of odd thing with the cup.... is the teams that get into it then play 2 regular season cup games against fellow cup teams which are stronger opponents, and may even lose a home game (play 40 home games and 42 road games as the Knicks last year).

The teams that don't advance in the cup would then play those 2 regular season games against non cup teams that should be weaker opponents while guaranteed 41 home games.

So if the teams primary intention was to maximize regular season wins would they prefer to have a lower point differential at the end and get eliminated from the cup in order to make those 2 regular season games easier opponents? It's an odd dynamic.
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That just seems like an awful lot of thought about an extra game on the road?
 
SharpesTriumph said:
One kind of odd thing with the cup.... is the teams that get into it then play 2 regular season cup games against fellow cup teams which are stronger opponents, and may even lose a home game (play 40 home games and 42 road games as the Knicks last year).

The teams that don't advance in the cup would then play those 2 regular season games against non cup teams that should be weaker opponents while guaranteed 41 home games.

So if the teams primary intention was to maximize regular season wins would they prefer to have a lower point differential at the end and get eliminated from the cup in order to make those 2 regular season games easier opponents? It's an odd dynamic.
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Yes but many of those cup teams are not stronger competitors necessarily. They just happened to win 3 cup games.
 
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