The Knicks are the NBA Cup champions after coming from behind Tuesday night to beat the San Antonio Spurs in Las Vegas.
It was the franchise’s first title of any kind since winning their last NBA championship in 1973.
But Charles Barkley believes the concept of the Cup itself is “embarrassing.”
“I think the cup thing is somewhat embarrassing,” Barkley told media personality Tom Tolbert on his YouTube show (via Awful Announcing). “I’m disappointed that we have to make an in-season tournament to make these guys more money so they won’t do load management.”
“But to have to pay these guys extra money to make them play other games – they should play basketball because they’re well-compensated to play basketball,” Barkley added. “To do an in-season tournament to make them extra money, come on, man. That’s a little bit ridiculous.”
Players from the winning team got more than $500,000 each for winning the Cup, and Karl-Anthony Towns said he will donate his winnings to youth sports programs in his native Dominican Republic.
Knicks coach Mike Brown, meantime, is looking forward to hanging a banner.
“The most positive is being able to hang a banner up in MSG, the most iconic arena in the league,” he told reporters.
As for the future of the Cup, the NBA announced in September that this would be the last year the semifinals and finals would be played at a neutral site. ESPN also reported the championship could be moved out of Las Vegas.
Not everyone agrees with Barkley, either.
“I think it’s registering well,” Washington Wizards guard CJ McCollum, the former president of the National Basketball Players Association, told ESPN last month. “I think there’s excitement around it. There’s a clear difference in those games. I think you understand magnitude of it, not just because of the [prize] money, and the significance of that, but I think it’s the court, the ball, the jerseys ... the NBA has bought into, obviously sponsors have bought into it, the players have obviously provided outstanding performances. Look at the last two years, those games have come down to the wire, they’ve been competitive, there’s a different feel than the monotony of the regular-season games.”
The Knicks, of course, hope the NBA Cup championship serves as a precursor to the real thing this spring, but the last two NBA Cup champions have lost in the first round of the NBA playoffs.