Thinking basketball podcast.

My name is Ben.

Welcome back to another episode.

Tonight, Cody, it is the opening night of the 2020-24-25 NBA Cup.

I threw you a curveball.

You didn't know that was coming, did you?

Opening night at the NBA Cup, yeah.

No, I legitimately, like if you would ask me 50-50, you're like, Cody, is the NBA

Cup still going on this year?

I wouldn't have been able to answer that question.

Like, that's terrible with me to admit, but I'm going to admit it right here.

I didn't know it was still a thing. I thought they were like, that was fun for one year. I guess we're done.

It could be the kind of thing that works and gets more interesting and enticing if you do it every other

year. If you have like a little bit of an Olympics thing going on where absence makes the heart grow

fonder. But of course, nobody loved it more than I did last year.

And I'm excited for it this year, but it's kind of clear that, you know, there's a little warm up.

The first couple round games, you got to get excited. And then once you get to that fourth game where

people are jockeying for position, the game's got really, really intense and good last year. And I think you can't,

you can't artificially like mimic that. When something's on the line and it's single elimination,

the competition kicks in and the coaches are like, maybe we'll tighten the bench up just a little bit.

Maybe we'll bust out some fun plays. Speaking of busting out some fun plays, man,

there have been some really good games this week, the Celtics and the Warriors and the Nuggets and the Thunder and the Nuggets are back.

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