Bucks are back with NBA Cup win

The Milwaukee Bucks are officially back after claiming the second-ever NBA Cup title last week after a struggle to start the 2024-25 campaign.
Giannis led the way with a 29-point, 19-rebound and 10-assist triple-double.
Many professional sports leagues have experimented with new rule changes or anything that could help the organizations gain traction in the viewership game.
For the NBA, Commissioner Adam Silver and his team came up with the newly founded NBA Cup, formally the In-Season Tournament, that was implemented into the 2023-24 season.
Well, in its second year of existence, the Milwaukee Bucks took down the Oklahoma City Thunder in Las Vegas last week to claim the tournament title after a surprising struggle to start the year. Each player on the winning team also gets roughly a $500k bonus, so the extra motivation to take it seriously is there.
As fans claim the title means nothing, for a team that started the season 1-6 when no one expected them to, and with certain aspects of the team game not clicking, any fan of the Bucks will probably be happy with what they saw throughout the group and knockout stages of the tournament.
Not much went right to open the year, but since the writing of this column for an early Christmas deadline, Milwaukee won 12 of its last 15 games and sits in fifth place in the Eastern Conference behind the likes of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Boston Celtics, New York Knicks and the Orlando Magic. Cleveland sits 1.5 games ahead of Boston, but both sit at least five games clear of third place. Milwaukee is 1.5 games out of third and 7.5 games behind the second-place Celtics.
The Bucks made a statement on defense in the championship, which was something the team struggled with in their 1-6 start. Milwaukee held Western Conference-leading Oklahoma City to 81 points, 33.7% shooting from the floor and just 15.6% from long range, which was all a season-best. It would’ve handed the Thunder their sixth loss this season in 26 games, but the championship game doesn’t make an impact in the standings.
The NBA Cup schedule is kind of wonky in the sense that the championship game between the Thunder and Bucks has no impact on the team’s record or even player stats. With a quarterfinal, semifinal and final format in the knockout stage, every team entered the last two seasons with 80 scheduled regular season games instead of the normal 82. Based on a team’s performance, the quarterfinal and semifinal games are those 81st and 82nd games, with the championship being an extra played game in the regular season.
Coming out of the win, the Bucks looked to make a move up the standings as they had a stretch of games at Cleveland, home versus Washington and at Chicago, before the Christmas holiday.
Giannis and Dame are the clear frontrunners offensively by averaging 32 and 25 points, respectively, but the contributions of others is what has turned the early part of the season back around.
Bobby Portis is producing off the bench once again and the youngster AJ Green has caught my eye in his third season and has clearly developed. Green has paved his way into Doc Rivers’ rotation with his outside shooting ability, where he has made two or more 3-pointers in nine straight games, which included the Cup final.
He is shooting at 47-47-83 splits this season and is averaging just under nine points a game.
Back in one of my November columns, it was mentioned that Milwaukee ranked in the bottom half of the league in defensive efficiency and is now tied for 10th during its turnaround, and is tied for first during its 12-3 run over the last 15 games. It has also climbed the ranks of 3-point shooting efficiency by having multiple 40-plus percent 3-point shooters this season.