The Whiteboard: What comes next for the Bucks and Thunder after NBA Cup run

For last season’s NBA Cup finalists, Las Vegas was the highlight of their season. The Lakers, winners of the inaugural in-season tournament, lost in the first round to the Nuggets in five games. The Indiana Pacers managed to make it to the Eastern Conference finals, but were easily dispatched by the eventual champions.

The Bucks and Thunder are hoping that Tuesday night’s NBA Cup final isn’t the peak of their season but a launching point to greater heights. So what comes next for the NBA Cup champion Bucks and runner-up Thunder?

Milwaukee Bucks

Milwaukee’s 97-81 win to claim the NBA Cup wasn’t a flash in the pan, but a culmination of an early-season turnaround led by Giannis Antetokounmpo. His 26-point, 19-rebound and 10-assist dismantling of the Thunder defense was just another date point in his MVP-caliber season. Giannis is the league’s leading scorer. His teammate, Damian Lillard, is the 11th. They are the highest-scoring tandem in the NBA, averaging a combined 58.4 points per game. Averaging 32.7 points on 61.4% shooting, 11.5 rebounds and 6.1 assists, Giannis is in the clear top two of the MVP race.

The Bucks went 6-0 in NBA Cup play in part because Giannis and Lillard cared about it so deeply. 

“It’s the best feeling ever — just winning,” Antetokounmpo told reporters. “We had this goal as a team and we have accomplished it. I’m very proud of everybody. I’m so happy for our team. We got our first trophy together and this is just the beginning.”

After starting the season by losing eight of their first 10 games, the Bucks are 12-3 since and have posted the league’s eighth-best net rating in that stretch. They are balanced, with Giannis and Lillard fueling their offense and coach Doc Rivers’ revamped lineup with Andre Jackson Jr. and A.J. Green adding length and athleticism on defense. Both their offense and defense rank in the top 10 in efficiency.

Khris Middleton is working his way back into the lineup, providing another long frame and ball-handler. His scoring and on-ball defense isn’t what it once was, but his timing with Antetokounmpo is still impeccable.

The Bucks are fifth in the East, 1.5 games out of third. They were always better than their 2-8 start. Winning the NBA Cup is a proof of concept that they can set out a goal and accomplish it. There is work to do to compete with the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers at the top of the conference, but they’ll have the best player on the floor in any matchup. The Bucks are here, and they are dangerous.

Oklahoma City Thunder

The Thunder are different cats than last year’s runner-ups. Young? Yes. Inexperienced? No. Oklahoma City was the No. 1 seed in the West last season and forged some much-needed playoff experience before losing in the second round to the Dallas Mavericks.

Their run to the NBA Cup final was less ambitious as Milwaukee’s and more the inevitable result of being one of the best regular-season teams we’ve seen. Their 12.1 net rating would be the highest tracked since 1997.

They’ve done it without their two centers available for a single game this season and with the best one, Chet Holmgren, having played just 10 games. Holmgren was emerging as perhaps OKC’s second-best player before going down with a hip injury. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander has cemented himself as a perennial MVP candidate and Jalen Williams has heated up after a cold start.

Missing 27 of their 32 3-point attempts in Tuesday’s final highlights one of the Thunder’s only flaws. The Thunder are 19th in 3-point shooting percentage after ranking first last season. They were never the best 3-point shooting team in the NBA, and they cooled off in the postseason (especially against the Mavericks). While they have plenty of capable 3-point shooters, they don’t have any who truly strike fear in opponents. Teams are getting more accustomed to playing off the likes of Alex Caruso and Cason Wallace to clog the lane for Gilgeous-Alexander.

Armed with plenty of draft capital and tradeable contracts, the Thunder should be on the hunt for another shooter and playmaker who can be on the court in crunch time before the deadline.

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NBA news roundup

• The Denver Nuggets are searching the trade market for a player who can help offensively, according to The Athletic. At the top of their list: Chicago’s Zach LaVine. League sources told The Athletic that, “the focus on LaVine in recent discussions is significant.” Would the Nuggets really trade Michael Porter Jr. for LaVine?
• Well, it’s official: the All-Star game is gonna be weird. The league announced on Tuesday that the All-Star game will move to a new format consisting of three games (two semi-final games and one final) and four, eight-player teams. Three of those teams will be made up of the 24 All-Stars, the other one will be the winning team from the Rising Stars challenge. My only question is: Why?
• Changes may also be coming to the NBA Cup, according to ESPN’s Tim Bontemps. Potential tweaks include playing the semifinals at home arenas, pushing the tournament deeper into the regular season and expanding group play from four to eight games to “to increase the chances of the best teams advancing.” My only question is: Isn’t that what the playoffs are for?

Changes to the NBA All-Star game we (I) really want to see

Hey guys, I came up with some better ideas for the All-Star game. It fixes everything. No, really!

• I’m here for the round-robin format, but it needs major upgrades. First, get rid of the Rising Stars. Nobody wants to see that (and why does one team basically get a bye week? That’s not fair.) Go back to East and West teams, but do four teams of six. 
• Instead of having the guys from TNT select the teams, the two highest vote-getters from each conference are named captains. They draft their teams from their respective conferences.
• Semi-final round is two games: East 1 vs East 2 and West 1 vs West 2. For the final, the winning captain gets to add one player from the team his team beat. Those teams of seven advance to the East vs West final.
• Each game starts with a three-minute “make-it-take-it” timer. The team that scores gets the ball back for the first three minutes. A team could theoretically go up eight, 10, 12 points before the other team even touches the ball. This ensures that both teams come out playing defense from the tip instead of willingly trading baskets until the final 10 points need to be decided.
• Now for the craziest wrinkle: Combine the dunk contest and the All-Star game. Every dunk during the semi-finals and finals is judged by a panel that is on-call and on-site in the arena. Sick of G Leaguers scripting dunks and making them on the third try? How about the league’s biggest stars uncorking in-game dunks on each other? At the end, the player with the single highest-scored dunk is named the dunk contest champion.

You’re welcome.