The Josh Innes Show - Stan Van Gundy's Dumb NBA Cup Take

Episode Date: December 17, 2025

Stan Van Gundy is of the belief that the NBA Cup is a rousing success. I can't tell you if it is or isn't. But, I think he delivered some pretty dumb takes on the tournament. That said, is it possible that American Sports can be fixed by adding financial incentives to every game? Let's talk. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

All right. So last night after I got home from the bowling alley and it was, you know, 11 o'clock, whatever it was. And it was the end of the NBA Cup championship game. If you don't know what the NBA Cup is, the NBA Cup is a way to try to make NBA players who are already millionaires play harder by rewarding them with more money for playing hard in a game. And the Knicks won the game. I forgot what the final was. I think I bet on the over and hit it. So, you know, I'm on a heater with those. Those are good games whenever there's $500,000 or so a piece on the line. Those are really good games to bet the over because home boys are going to fight it out to the end. So the overhitting that. But Stan Van Gundy was broadcasting. He was the color analyst in the game.

And he said something that I found so preposterous, just so stupid. And I'll tell you about that after you hear these messages. All right. So here was what Stan Van Gundy said. I don't have the actual audio. I'm not going to take the time to go try to read. watch the entire NBA Cup championship to get audio for you on this, and I don't know where I'd find it.

But at one point, Stan Van Gundy says, basically, I'm paraphrasing, is, look, if you don't like what you're seeing tonight, you just don't like basketball, which is one of the things I hate when people tell you that. Like, that's such a cop-out bullshit thing to say about anything. Like, if this is not a game that you enjoy, you just don't like football. Like when you know, it's six to three and dudes are hitting each other and there's no offense going and you've got a guy going, look, if you don't like this, then you just don't like basketball, or you just don't like football.

And I find it to be so preposterous and so lazy and so stupid and such a cop-out answer to shit. But the part that I think bothered me about that the most is you're trying to sell me. And I think we're also trying to sell about how, you know, people were skeptical of the NBA Cup, but just watch this game and you'll see that these guys are really into it. They want to win this thing. Yeah. They don't want to win this thing because it's the NBA Cup.

and they don't care about the trophy. They care that if you're the winning team, you make $530,000, reportedly. And if you're the runner-up, you make $212,000 per player. If you're a semifinalist, you make $106,000 per player. And if you make it to the quarterfinals, you are $53,000 richer. So, like, the idea that you're trying to sell me,

which is, these guys are out there and they want to win this thing. There's a lot of passion here. They're diving for lose balls. Yeah, because it's a lot of. It's a difference of $300,000 to be the winner or the loser of the game, which I find to be whatever. Like if you have to bribe these guys to play hard during the season, then your league fucking sucks and it's broken. And you can tell me about your expansion ideas and all the other markets you want to be in. People aren't going to a lot of these games.

Memphis is seeing a decline in attendance. New Orleans. You can shoot a cannon through there, not hit anybody. I'm not one of these people that's going to tell you that the NBA is dreadful and terrible and whatever. I'm not Clay Travis that just focuses on the NBA and their shitty results. and they're shitty numbers. But like, don't sell me or attempt to sell me on something being amazing and spectacular. And if you don't like this, then you just don't like this sport and blah, blah, blah.

When you're bribing people, you're bribing players to play hard. Now, you could call it incentivizing them to play hard. Well, okay, let me, I will propose this. So if you see that you get better results and better action and the game seem to matter, whenever guys are basically dancing for their dinner, if you will, right? Like, yes, they've got a salary. Yes, they're making money. Many of them have $20, $30 million a year salaries and all that shit, right?

So, like, I get it. But if you're trying to convince me that this is good for basketball and that this kind of thing that gets people into it is good, then why don't you add that element of dance for your dinner in every game? And I'm well aware that it's not financially viable to do that. You can't be like, you know, the winner of every basketball. ball game makes an extra 50 grand. I mean, everybody would go broke. But maybe, and not even just the loser gets a sub. What if you just set up a world where they've already got their

salaries, but each game that your team wins, there's an extra $20,000 for the winner. 12 guys, $20,000. So you're talking about, what, $200,000 extra. Again, it's a lot of money that will add up and it doesn't, you know, it's not sustainable. I get that. But what if it was sponsored? I don't know. But if you're trying to incentivize guys to play harder and what you've learned is giving them money makes them play harder, why not? Treat it like golf, right? Like, there are guys in golf. Now, you're never going to do a situation like that where, you know, guys are making money from sponsors and then they make money from, you know, their results in a tournament. But what if you did that? What if in a sport like basketball where the biggest issue is you feel

like guys are not playing hard, guys check out, guys pick and choose when to play? What if you incentivized it by adding bonuses for guys based on winning or losing games. I know it's not super possible. I'm aware of that. What if the amount of game, what if there's like a milestone for every team? Like let's say every time you get to 10 wins, like once you hit 10 wins, 20 wins, 30 wins, each one, there's like a bonus of, you know, 50 grand for each player. Now, it shouldn't come down to this.

It shouldn't be a matter of, well, we have to get these guys basically bribed with more money to play. But if you're trying to make your sport more interesting and you're convinced that this NBA Cup is great and wonderful and it makes guys play harder, which obviously it does because somebody wants to make 530,000. I don't care how much money you have. You can be LeBron or you can be the 12th guy on the bench. It doesn't matter. 530 grand is 530 grand. That's a shit ton of money. So you're making $530,000 to win that tournament. I mean, you're talking about a difference of over $300,000 to be the runner up. So obviously they were playing hard. They want that cash. What if there was a way to incentivize it where each game or each month or each milestone that you hit results in more cash?

It won't happen that way. It'll never happen that way. But what if it was like golf? What if each tournament in golf you make the cut? There's a certain amount, a low end that you can make and a high end you can make. What if it were like that? It'll never happen. But if you're trying to convince me that this NBA cup is changing the game and like first of all,

I thought it was preposterous what Van Gundy was trying to sell, which was, if anybody thought this was a bad idea, watch what we're seeing. Well, yeah, because guys are playing for more money. Give them more money, and maybe they'll play harder in these other games. But you know how I feel about things like this. I want relegation in every major sport. I would give my left nut. You want to make – really, there's one true way to make sports better, and we talk about this all the time. Sure, you can add incentives like this where every game or every week or what if there was like a weekly tally or something in the NBA?

And whichever team wins the most games over the course of a week or the top five teams in terms of win totals over the course of a week, each team, you know, divvies up $250,000 to the guys. I don't know. It's probably not doable or realistic, but whatever. But like, let's say you did treat it like golf and you find some way to set it up where each game there's like a purse, right? So going into each game, the purse for this, and maybe the purse is determined by how good each team is. Like if it's the Grizzlies versus the Pelicans, the purse isn't as high. So like there's a $100,000 purse and the winning team gets 80% of it. Again, I know it doesn't seem like a ton, but like what if you got an extra 20 grand just for winning a basketball game?

Do you think guys would play hard? Do you think that while LeBron or somebody like LeBron may not be as interested because LeBron's rich anyway, you know, who might play hard is the guy that's number seven or eight off the bench? I don't know. Or back to the relegation point, which I think is the thing that could save American sports. I am dying for relegation. I think college football should have relegation. College football would make the most sense because there's an obvious hierarchy, right? So it wouldn't be hard to take, like, the SEC has 20 great teams.

If you want to rename it, rename it, but you take 20 great teams that are in the top conference, then another one below it and another one below that. And if you don't hit a certain threshold, you get knocked down to the other one. and you can play your way up to promotion. To me, that's amazing shit. I don't know the economics of it. I mean, because obviously, like, let's say you're at LSU, where there's a ton of revenue coming in.

If you get demoted to the next rung down, the revenue goes down, and that's bad for business. So no one would ever agree to it. We will never see a world where there's relegation in American sports. But if you want American sports to be interesting all the time, if you want to eliminate the Pittsburgh Pirates of the world, teams that go out there and just suckle off the, the shared revenue teat and deliberately field bad teams because you can still get rich even

with a bad team or even if you're not deliberately fielding a bad team or at least putting a product out there that you know is inferior because why not like there's no incentive to get better the pirates will always be in major league baseball they will never be sent down to the pacific coast league or the international league or double a or single a they will always be the pittsburgh pirates they will always play in that ballpark and they will always share revenue with the other owners and always get rich. It doesn't matter if Paul Skeens is there or if they trade him for a bag of balls. It doesn't matter.

So they will never agree to that. There will never be a time when owners or anybody else and any other sports says, hey, we agree that if we get bounced from our division, we move down. Thus, our revenues are lower and our contracts aren't as valuable and our television deal isn't as good. They will never in a billion years do that. But that would make the sports that are non-football. Like, football will always be interesting to people.

But when you look at the other sports, like baseball, where, I mean, especially in the era of the Dodgers, like, I mean, most cities do not feel like they have a chance. But, Josh, what about Milwaukee? Great. Milwaukee was cute, and then they got bounced. Like, it's possible to have a decent team during the regular season, but then get to the playoffs and try to put your dinky starting rotation up against the Dodgers who have like eight starters that are all stars. Like, it can't happen. But if you created a world where you incentivize. winning, at least winning enough to not get bumped down to the Pacific Coast League.

Can you imagine if the last series of the year, for a team that would normally just be out of it and like the games wouldn't matter, can you imagine if like the pirates are facing the royals or something last week into the year, three game series, and you have to take two out of three or you're moving down and you're playing the Memphis Redbirds next year? Or imagine a world where the Memphis Redbirds could somehow move up. Or you don't even do that. You just split baseball in half and you take like the top half of the 30 teams or 32 or however many teams are. You take the top half and the top half are in an elite league where there's more money, whatever.

And then the bottom half of it, that's what you get relegated to. Don't even have to include the double A's and triple A's. It'd be fucking awesome. They never will. But it would be fantastic. Like to me, that would do it. Encentivize winning and at least trying. Because too many American sports and the American sports leagues reward you for.

for trying to lose or reward you for not trying to win, maybe the better way of putting it. Like, I don't know that a bunch of teams go out there deliberately to lose. Like, I don't think the pirates line up every day and build a roster where they're like, I hope we lose. But they don't build a roster where they hope to win, if that makes sense. And build a world where winning games will protect you and keep you from being relegated to a point where you're making nothing, where your value of your franchise takes a massive hit. Can you imagine a world where an owner who's baseball team today, like, what are the Pittsburgh Pirates worth?

My guess is the Pittsburgh Pirates are worth $2 billion, maybe a billion. They're probably not worth $2 billion. But the Pittsburgh Pirates value, let's see, Pittsburgh Pirates value today. It's got to be over a billion dollars, right? The Pirates are worth $1.32 billion, which is kind of middle of the pack. right they're actually they're near the bottom they're 24th in value 1.32 billion dollars is what the pirates the Pittsburgh pirates the biggest joke of an organization outside of the marlins the marlins by the way are worth a billion the rays who are another throwaway organization

worth 1.25 billion that's the value of these franchises the white socks who are a worthless franchise are worth two billion dollars why do I tell you all this. That value wouldn't be the same if there was a chance that you would be playing the Toledo Mudhins next year. But of course, no one would ever agree to that, and it'll never happen. But man, it'd be great if it would. It'd be pretty sexy if it would. And so back to the original point of Stan Van Gundy saying that you don't like basketball, if you don't like this, how do you create a world where these guys have to feel like they're playing for their dinner, dancing for their dinner, night in, night out? And you can't. I don't. I

guarantee there were games happening that weren't the NBA Cup. Now, last night it was only the NBA Cup championship. But like tonight, there'll be games the night before there were games. You will not see that level of energy or passion because they're not playing for $500,000. Can you create a world? I know it sounds pathetic, but can you create a world where you build in that type of incentive in every game to make the guys actually want to play? It's sad that you've got to do it because they're already making $30 million and endorsements and everything else. They're not hurting. And you'd like to to believe that the cash they're already making. That's what the money is for to go out there

and ball. But obviously it doesn't work that way because people take nights off. They get bored. They don't play. The games don't matter. But imagine if they did. Imagine if you incentivize that. Imagine like every game you just have like a giant pot of cash out on the court. And the people know, like going in. The fans know what's at stake. And then somehow incentivize the fans in it too. Like there are ways to do things. It's sad that you have to. But there are ways. More to come. At Fandual Casino, you get even more ways to play. Dive into new and exciting games and all of your favorite casino classics, like slots, table games, and arcade games.

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