Legacies are built in June, not in December.
It’s an easy retort to the idea that the NBA Cup bears any weight, that the two teams competing in Las Vegas for a makeshift banner to hang from their home-court rafters have done anything of significance in accomplishing the feat.
Because teams don’t dole out super max contracts to hang In-Season Tournament banners, and the greatest of all-time debates rarely recall winter basketball. April, May and June are where legends are born.
It’s a fair question — just what, exactly, is the NBA Cup worth? — especially with the Knicks advancing to the Cup Final in just the third year of the In-Season Tournament’s existence.
And yet there’s already a pattern emerging that’s difficult to ignore. Two of the four teams to reach the NBA Cup Final in its first two years went on to compete in the 2025 NBA Finals. The tournament has quietly become an early pressure test — a barometer for teams with legitimate postseason ambitions. For the Knicks, it offered something more tangible than silverware: a hard look in the mirror. Wins over Orlando and Toronto provided playoff-style reps under bright lights, against opponents they’re likely to see again when the margins shrink. That kind of intel, this early in the season, carries real value.
Then there’s the act of winning itself, something these Knicks value as a competitive staple.
LeBron James, the league’s all-time leading scorer, made no secret of wanting the inaugural NBA Cup for his trophy case. Giannis Antetokounmpo, a two-time MVP, followed by defeating Oklahoma City to claim the second. Winning the third-ever NBA Cup wasn’t priority No. 1 for the Knicks entering the season — but it was something to chase, a moment to meet.
And yes, there are perks. A midseason trip to Las Vegas doesn’t hurt. Neither do the financial incentives — the champions take home more than $500,000 per player, the runners-up just under $250,000, the semifinalists north of $100,000. That might be a rounding error for supermax stars, but it can mean everything to the players at the back end of the rotation.
“So that competitive spirit exists throughout the organization,” head coach Mike Brown told reporters after practice on Monday. “And then having a guy like Jalen as your leader, who embraces the work, embraces the process, more importantly embraces the details of what you need to do to go out there and win, at his size and his athleticism, he doesn’t have a lot of room for — or a lot of margin for error, so he embraces the little things. That feeds off to everybody else.
“So for us, we feel like we deserve to be here. We want to take advantage of being here by going out and trying to get this win.”
So no, the NBA Cup isn’t the endgame. History may not remember the winners of the NBA’s newest experiment 20 years from now. Or maybe it’ll herald them as trailblazers who set the tone for competing for the league’s in-season crown.
What’s clear is winning the Cup has become more than an asterisk on a resume — and for teams like the Knicks, it may be a meaningful step toward something bigger. For the league, it’s something compelling to sell, which is more than they can say for their All-Star Game product.
The players are visibly more invested when there’s something tangible at stake, even if it isn’t the NBA title.
