Tuesday night the OKC Thunder not only redeemed themselves for a lackluster showing against the Rockets during their previous outing but stamped their ticket to the next stage of the Emirates NBA Cup, as they bested the now-eliminated Utah Jazz by a commanding final score of 133-106.
Though excitement is generally the reaction expected with any kind of tournament victory, in a rather perplexing turn of events, following Oklahoma City's advancement to the Knockout Rounds it appeared that confusion and contempt were the emotions being felt.
Despite the league's best efforts to make the rules of their recently implemented in-season tournament as straightforward as possible, since its inception, many have been confused by the formatting.
During their postgame press conferences, Thunder players and coaches seemed to corroborate this disorientation of the rules.
Thunder perfectly highlight how confusing the Emirates NBA Cup is
Sophomore guard Cason Wallace revealed during his presser that he "just found out" about how the result of Tuesday's matchup between the Phoenix Suns and San Antonio Spurs could affect their standing in the second round of the tournament, saying: "I don't really know much about the Cup and how it works."
Thunder superstar Shai Gilgeous-Alexander also was quite blunt with his response to whether he's been following the potential different scenarios with the other Cup games being played, admitting that he hadn't been because "It's all too confusing."
There is certainly some serious merit to these comments concerning the puzzling nature of the tournament's format.
Not only is each conference broken up into three separate groups of five teams, and each team is incentivized to win as many games as possible, but a club's point differential plays a part in if they move on as well.
This latter part seems to confuse people the most and is also the aspect that coach Mark Daigneault truly resents.
Asked if there was any "temptation" to keep starters out on the floor despite having a virtually insurmountable lead to "run the score up even more" -- after all, point differential plays a part in the NBA Cup --, the Thunder headman retorted with a resounding no.
He would proceed to reveal why he believes this to be one of the tournament's biggest flaws.
"Number one, because of player health. Imagine if it's an NBA Cup game and we're up by 30 and I run a 35 minute player out there and God forbid something happens because I'm chasing a point differential. That would be really bad for the league and for the team. I don't love the design because it's incentivizing that or running the score up on an opponent which, you know, there's a certain grace you win with. They've created an incentive that flips that on its head," Daigneault said.
Daigneault would continue on to state that, if given the opportunity, he would vote against keeping this point-differential in the rule book, and even suggested "maybe quarters" as a way to better break things down, though admitted "I'm not sitting in a room thinking about that."
Regardless of their, along with many others' opinions on the Emirates NBA Cup, the Thunder find themselves en route toward the Knockout Rounds, which consists of eight qualifying teams partaking in single-elimination games until a champion is crowned.
Cup play will start back up on Tuesday, December 10.