The NBA Cup is getting on my nerves.
I’m totally in favor of the concept in theory — I spent a great many words defending it at the beginning of last season and thoroughly enjoyed Joe Mazzulla declaring war on Andre Drummond and intentionally fouling him to run up a 27-point victory to advance to the quarterfinals.
But I’m kind of over this whole group stage concept, which works better in soccer when scores are 3-1 instead of 138-129. I’m kind of over “the Celtics need to beat the Bulls by 16 and the Magic have to lose to the Pacers or beat them by less than 7 and/or the Knicks need to trade for Joel Embiid and the planets need to align in perfect parallax and we all have to sing ‘Rich Girl’ by Daryl Hall and John Oates in four-part harmony” for the Celtics to advance.