The NBA Cup, Banners, & the Joy of Winning

During the Knicks’ NBA Cup Final matchup against the Spurs, I found myself pacing around my living room for a game in the middle of December. It was a feeling I have only felt during playoff games. As much as people have criticized the NBA Cup as a gimmick, I was invested in the idea of seeing the Knicks hoist a trophy for the first time in my life. When they made the Finals in 1994 and 1999, the Bob Cousy Trophy for the Eastern Conference champion had not been introduced yet (that would become the standard in 2001).

This was a chance to see our team actually win something, to see Jalen Brunson be given a trophy for his individual excellence. When the victory was sealed, it was a moment of joy to watch our team be awarded hardware from NBA Commissioner Adam Silver.

It was a detour of happiness and accomplishment for fans, a moment that proved that this is indeed a special group. But many have downplayed the win, noting the lack of meaning of the Cup, and mocked Knicks fans for celebrating. It calls into question how this new tournament should be treated and viewed by its victors and the larger basketball ecosystem.

The Knicks are the third winners of the NBA Cup, following the Lakers in 2023 and the Bucks last season. Of the three teams, the Knicks have a more interesting recent championship dynamic. Both the Lakers and Bucks had won titles this decade, so it can be argued that they didn’t have a desperate need for success. The Knicks haven’t won the conference in 26 years and haven’t won a title in 53.

The NBA Cup is not the Larry O’Brien Trophy, but winning this game provided a sense of fun and happiness that this team can win a game in a high-leverage atmosphere. It showed that this bench may be rounding into form with the elevated play of Tyler Kolek, Mitchell Robinson, and Jordan Clarkson.

The game and the moment mattered to the players, and it mattered to fans who were invested and watching. The common refrain from many has been that the competition of the Cup is embarrassing, and it is not something that should be celebrated. What has become undervalued is that winning a trophy is hard, finding success in the NBA is hard, and triumphs should be celebrated. The importance of the NBA Cup has been called into question as a result, and the mixed reactions feel par for the course for something so new.

As a general rule, people hate change. We develop comfort with the status quo and stick to it. We all have our favorite parking spot and favorite table at the bar or coffee shop. We are creatures of habit and often like things the way they are, even if they are flawed. When the NBA introduced the NBA Cup (formerly known as the In-Season Tournament), many people scoffed.

But the reason for its creation was that the league had a growing problem of fans not tuning in to the regular season before Christmas Day. Creating stakes with a tournament that featured colorful courts and a single-elimination knockout stage was a solution to that problem.

There has been a rejection of the validity of the NBA Cup. The point has been made that the general basketball public has forgotten about the Lakers and Bucks Cup wins, and that hanging a banner in their arenas was embarrassing.

What has taken place when it comes to honoring the winners of these tournaments is that people have defaulted to saying that it doesn’t matter, that it is a fake trophy. There was also a time when people thought the greatest ideas in the world were a fad.

Many tech writers and executives thought the iPhone would fail because it didn’t have a keyboard (a thought that was famously uttered by former Microsoft CEO and Clippers owner Steve Ballmer). It’s a notion that sounds ridiculous today, but in the early 2000s, the standard was that every smartphone had a keyboard. The iPhone changed that paradigm, and our thinking was adjusted as a result.

The NBA Cup is, of course, not the iPhone, but it stands to reason that the vitriol aimed toward it is the rejection of something new and different from the first 75 years of the league’s history. We are used to only one trophy existing, and now we have two. It is natural that there would be some pushback on its validity in the infancy of its existence. Eventually, there will be a wider range of acceptance of the Cup. But in the present, there has been debate over how the Knicks should celebrate their win, and if this success warrants a banner in the rafters of Madison Square Garden.

There is no winning when it comes to the discussion of how to honor an NBA Cup win. When the Lakers won the inaugural tournament, they put a banner up and were ruthlessly mocked for it. The Knicks decided to go the other way and not hang a banner, citing that they were focused on the bigger picture of winning an NBA championship. That decision has also faced criticism, with many suggesting that the Knicks are disrespecting a tournament that the NBA clearly cares about.

While it is admirable to say that the team is solely focused on a championship, the team’s decision brings up a question that all NBA fans must answer. What is the best way to commemorate an NBA Cup win?

Initially, the banner idea makes sense in the way that the Lakers planned to implement it—one singular banner where future wins would be added. But others have felt that this is too much, tainting the championship banners that it would sit next to. In the case of Madison Square Garden, that critique rings a bit hollow as the Knicks have banners up for the times they won the Atlantic Division, and there are banners for performers like Harry Styles.

In a certain sense, not hanging a banner because of being focused on the “real” championship feels like a side effect of ring culture, where the big win is all that matters, rendering any smaller win meaningless. It’s a symptom of modern sports where we too often overlook fun moments because we are conditioned to only value the biggest moment that may never come.

Knick fans have been through a lot in the last quarter of a century. Something to commemorate a fun victory would be a nice moment for the fans. Not hanging the banner (for whatever James Dolan’s true motives are) feels a little short-sighted by the organization and dismissive of the NBA Cup on a franchise ownership level.

The players, on the other hand, seem to be very invested in the Cup and get medals to remember their triumph. Fans ultimately deserve a small moment to celebrate their team winning a competitive game in Las Vegas that netted hardware. Whether that is a display in the corridors of the Garden or a banner in the rafters, the fans deserved an acknowledgement of the accomplishment. That might still be in the cards in the offseason, but for now, it feels like a miss by the organization to both celebrate its triumph and add further validity to the importance of the NBA Cup.