Despite the fact that my Boston Celtics just lost to the Atlanta Hawks 117-116 in the first NBA Cup game of the season, I’m still not sold on this marketing ploy.

First off, the Hawks were without Trae Young which makes this loss sting a bit. It stings a bit more when you realize the C’s smoked the Hawks already this season in a blowout win. Nonetheless, the Celtics are still without Kristaps Porzingis and Atlanta is no real threat in the east this season—at least for now.

As for the NBA Cup, I think it’s just a way to keep games somewhat interesting during the regular season. All-Star Weekend already has been losing steam the past few years, load management has superstars sitting out games, and the balance of power only has a couple teams actually worth watching. This tournament is a way to have all teams be competitive in trying to win.

Now I’m all for trying to make things interesting, but nobody really cares about this goal. The Lakers, led by LeBron James won the first ever cup last season, but their season was considered a fail still. The Celtics ended up winning the Larry O’Brien Trophy and are the team that we talk about.

If Michael Jordan won the NBA Cup, you’d see a clip in ‘The Last Dance’ Doc of MJ telling his teammates not to be excited about it because it doesn’t mean shit. And you know what, he’d be correct.

Winning the cup doesn’t even mean that the team would be the best in the regular season, it’s really about who’s healthy at that time and who’s going to try the hardest. The teams with high hopes on winning a title aren’t going to care for those games just because they might get paid extra. It’s not added to coaches or players resumes, and it’s not persay making fans care about it. Most fans just want their team to be fully healthy and try to make the playoffs. Bad enough we already have the play-in for the playoffs which just reward the teams that couldn’t get it gone in the regular season.

But I digress.