Good afternoon and welcome to Locked on NBA Daily on today's show.

The Knicks are NBA Cup champions.

Will this propel them to the NBA finals?

Meanwhile, Adam Silver gave us a specific timeline on when we can expect a decision on league expansion.

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Hello and welcome back to Lockdown NBA Daily, part of the Lockdown Podcast Network.

Now the number one sports podcast network, however you're tuning in on YouTube or on your podcast app. Thanks for making us your first listen every day. Today's episode is brought to you by GameTime. Download the GameTime app, create an account, use the code Lockdown NBA for $20 off your first purchase. I'm West Goldberg. Today we're talking about the lessons the league can learn from the NBA Cup and what expansion could look like when it eventually does happen.

We're doing it with the help of lockdown's local experts.

I have two of the best with me as always from the Lockdown Nuggets podcast.

He's a senior NBA writer for the Action Network.

It's Matt Moore, Matt.

Congrats to the Knicks except for the fact that they think they are too good to raise the Cup banner in MSG. How dare they think that the Knicks are anything special? From the Lockdown Bulls podcast, he's also a Bears and Bulls creator for Belich report. It's Hayes. Good win by the Knicks yesterday, and the NBA Cup continues to improve. It does. So let's just get right into it, guys. The Knicks beat the Spurs to win the NBA

Cup last night. The Knicks fans at least seemed legitimately excited, even if the organization

doesn't want to put up their banner, even though you won one title in 1973 and you're

going to act like you're too good for this thing. Like, relax. But look, it's not just

about winning the Cup, but what it could mean going forward that has Knicks fans so excited. Here's more from Gavin Shaw of Locked on Knicks. I'm going to read a lot into tonight. I said coming in the Spurs, thanks to the Knicks, just terrible schedule to start the year, even if they weren't the Thunder, the healthy version of the Spurs represented clearly the best opponent that Nicks have faced all season long, down by 11 in the

third quarter when Victor Wembenyama just started Wembenyamaing out, two threes, two dunks,

offensive rebounds galore, Nick's struggling at the point of attack, and then they just

kick some butt in the fourth quarter and win the NBA Cup. The value in this is intel, right? And it's self-scouting. And it's something I've talked about for years and years and years with the New York Knicks. Like, how do you perform in a game where, like, one of the best young coaches planning against you intensely? Before that, Jamal Mosley, and before that, like, Darko Royakovich.

Like, like, this is a good run of coaches, like, designing complete game plans to expose the Knicks' weaknesses and blunt their strengths.

How do you respond in those moments?

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