NBA Cup Final Preview
The Athletic NBA Daily
The Athletic
4.1 • 2.2K Ratings
🗓️ 16 December 2025
⏱️ 40 minutes
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Summary
Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni are joined by James Edwards of the Athletic to discuss the Knicks in the NBA Cup. They first discuss James’ thoughts on the NBA Cup as a whole, and what the league could do better for the in season tournament. Then they discuss the Knicks chances of winning and what the challenges will be for the Knicks. In part 2, Jared Weiss joins to discuss the Spurs side of this Cup preview. They discuss Jared’s thoughts on the cup, Wemby’s rise, and more.
Host: Dave DuFour
With: Es Baraheni, James Edwards, Jared Weiss
Producer: Andrew Schlecht
Video Producer: Alex Oliver
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Good morning, everybody. |
| 0:09.1 | Welcome to the NBA Daily. |
| 0:10.7 | I'm Dave Dufour here with Esperi. |
| 0:12.9 | We're joined by James Edwards, who covers the Knicks. |
| 0:15.7 | We're live in Vegas. |
| 0:17.7 | NBA Cup championship between the Knicks and Spurs tonight. |
| 0:21.7 | Yes. |
| 0:22.1 | The ultimate respect the cup moment. |
| 0:23.7 | That's right. |
| 0:24.5 | Do you respect the cup? |
| 0:25.7 | James? |
| 0:26.4 | Yeah. |
| 0:27.0 | Do you respect the cup? |
| 0:28.7 | I don't. |
| 0:29.7 | Because let me, let me get this out. |
| 0:33.5 | My biggest issue with the cup is the propaganda around it, right? |
| 0:38.0 | I don't know if you guys get these tweets or see these tweets as a somebody that covers a team and routinely is like I think this is this is pointless. |
| 0:46.2 | I see these tweets. |
| 0:47.5 | It's the propaganda of the league admitting that their regular season product in their eyes isn't good enough. |
| 1:45.8 | So we have to create this whole thing. That's an issue to me. Like you shouldn't, if your regular season isn't what you want it to be, then let's fix it in a way that let's shorten the season. Okay, but we know the reasons why, like no one wants to make less money. Right. Okay. And so you've got this number of games that you got. Although that may change because the regional networks are going to go away. Right. So you're not selling the same packages. They're not going to reduce 82 games, though. But they should. I agree with you. Number one, 82 game season. Like we talk about this all the time. The value of each game is so low. You know, college football has this great thing where one bad week and you're out of it. And, you know, I do think like the NBA misses out on that. It's one of the reasons why the cup to me is good. Because basketball at its best is single elimination tournament. Yeah. The March Madness. And so you get a little bit of that here right i would actually and and i got an idea here cook it's not to fix the cup i actually think |
| 1:51.9 | the cup is good it's the regular season that's the problem okay from what standpoint it's just too long |
| 1:58.1 | it's too long okay and it's and we we talk all the time about how many games, how many minutes, all these guys have to play. Yeah. So what if you do reduce the season to 58 games, let's say it's a home and away for everybody. It's a balanced schedule, which we talk about often. I wouldn't get rid of conferences because I actually think it feels like sports to have. We're living in a utopia. Yeah. |
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