The Bucks have to play a meaningless basketball game tomorrow night because it’s the NBA Cup

Here’s hoping Milwaukee isn’t hurt by the NBA’s great experiment.

They’ve done it: the Milwaukee Bucks have made the NBA Cup Final and will face off with the West-leading Oklahoma City Thunder tomorrow in Las Vegas. This game doesn’t count in the standings, nor do the statistics accumulated therein, but unfortunately, and importantly, any injury a player sustains Tuesday evening will be very real. Why are we doing this again?

Getting here has already secured every player on both rosters a $206k bonus. The winners will get another $309k. The winner raises a banner and gets… bragging rights, I guess? Not an extra win in the standings. Just the title of a tournament everyone will forget about by February like they did last year (seriously, was anyone talking about it even weeks after it finished?) because it only results in more money for millionaires.

Yes, we should get an entertaining game out of this somewhat meaningless exhibition, assuming both teams play their full rosters. Each side had two days off after vanquishing conference foes in Saturday’s semifinals; the Bucks defeated the Hawks, and the Thunder defeated the Rockets. It’s a one-off game set up to be competitive since all players receive a windfall from it.

Creating compelling basketball out of Tuesday and Friday evening games in November and December has seemingly has been the whole point of this tournament from the get-go. The group stage games count in the standings and doing well enough in them gets teams into the knockout stage, and for making that, players get $51k. They’re more than just regular season games that count as usual in the standings. So are the quarter and semifinal matchups, which give bigger bonuses ($103k and $206k, respectively) as well as counting in the standings. It’s essentially bribery to get players to take these early-season games more seriously.

That, in theory, drives ratings. More eyeballs on an early December Tuesday night Magic-Bucks matchup than would be otherwise because it’s a cup game. Two years isn’t quite enough to judge whether increased ratings for those games will be sustained, but early returns don’t necessarily suggest they will. Still, there’s no reason these games can’t necessarily be competitive if they aren’t part of NBA Cup qualification. Think about that Magic-Bucks game last week: would Jalen Suggs not be trying to will his injury-depleted team to a shorthanded victory, down their two stars? Would the Bucks, losers of eight of their first 10 games this season, be putting forth the type of effort that would give them another bad loss?

It’s cynical to think that players aren’t trying their hardest to win every single game, especially on title contenders. So the league pays them extra to make the games more interesting, fine. It’s helped them land a new TV deal, and you can bet the whole NBA Cup idea juiced the dollar figure the NBA will get. That’s the bottom line here, of course. Yeah, maybe the semifinal participants of Milwaukee, OKC, Houston, and Atlanta weren’t what the league was hoping for. Better luck next year with a New York or LA team, guys!

This will only last if the fans and players buy into the idea, though. I don’t think we have to worry much about the latter, given the extra cash they’re netting during the whole process. But for fans, what does this 83rd game get us, especially Bucks fans? Perhaps this game might be a little more interesting than a Bucks-Thunder matchup would be if it weren’t the NBA Cup Final. But it only is because the players are getting more money: if this game counted in the standings as any other regular season game does, that’s just what it would be.

To be clear, I am not advocating for eliminating the player incentive for these games. As long as the NBA Cup exists, this compensation pretty much has to exist too. While I or other fans might love for their team to gain an extra, tradeable draft pick or a cap exception next offseason—two ideas many have floated since the NBA Cup concept was announced—if they win, players aren’t going to care about that so much, which is fine. So why not add that in for fans too? Or make the win (but not the loss) count in the standings, meaning it could be a tiebreaker for playoff seeding? Sounds like a good way to make the tournament result matter come spring rather than it being totally forgotten.

Moreover, players are being asked—or in my admittedly cynical telling here, bribed—to risk their bodies to win a game that doesn’t materially help their team in any way. Just to make for an exciting basketball game on a mid-December Tuesday. That’s all well and good but for a team with as many injury and age concerns as the Bucks? This team would be in deep, deep trouble if any of their starters gets injured for a significant length of time tomorrow.

To be clear, I will have a hard time forgiving the NBA if any Buck is injured tomorrow, let alone an important one. I, for one, would not be mad at all if they elected to rest any or all of Giannis Antetokounmpo, Damian Lillard, Khris Middleton, and Brook Lopez. Similarly, I would be pleased as punch if the Thunder rested any or all of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, Isaiah Hartenstein, or Lu Dort.

This won’t happen, of course, because the league will undoubtedly be furious and fine a team who does such a thing. But if we don’t care about how much above the luxury tax a team is paying for its roster, we shouldn’t care about them getting fined by Adam Silver, nor should we care about the players getting the NBA Cup bonus. The bonus is a drop in the bucket to the Bucks’ two max players and their three other players making over eight figures. The Thunder have six players making at least $10m.

It’s been argued that teams are playing for their young and/or minimum-salaried players in these games, who are making between $1–3m. That’s noble, to be sure. And many teams have such players in their rotations, not just at the ends of their benches! So why not let those guys play for it? That’s a rhetorical question, of course. Casual fans aren’t going to tune in to watch these two teams duke it out:

But I, a basketball sicko, will! I love watching the young guys get run. And I won’t be worried about any of the Bucks’ key starters getting hurt. The associated fine is a price the Bucks and Thunder should be willing to pay. Yes, it’s all a statement against the idea of this meaningless 83rd game which will piss off the suits in league HQ. But it would at least get them to reevaluate things regarding the NBA Cup, which is something I believe they’ll need to do in the years ahead anyway.

Giannis, Dame, et al will play tomorrow night and that’s the reality of the situation. They shouldn’t go all out for the money. If I were Jimmy Haslem, I’d just make up the difference the Bucks would make with a W out of my own pocketbook and tell them to play at 50% or less, just to keep them healthy and avoid the NBA’s wrath. After all, the real victory tomorrow night will not be the outcome, it will be getting through it unscathed.