Everyone still does not quite know what to make of the NBA Cup.
The second year of the NBA's In-Season Tournament is still met with a sort of curiosity. These are still regular season games so they are not devoid of meaning. It is just whether they have more meaning than a normal game.
When teams lose, they move on. When they get eliminated, they shrug and move forward.
It seems to be the case that the NBA Cup gains in intensity the closer teams get to the chance to win the whole thing. Tuesday's final day of group games is bringing with it the pressure and intensity for teams looking to advance. But they may not sweat losing.
That is not how the Orlando Magic have approached the NBA Cup. They remember getting left out on point differential last year after going 3-1 in their group play games. They learned a tough lesson regretting a 20-point loss in their first NBA Cup game to the Brooklyn Nets.
They vowed that would not happen again. And have played like it.
And just like the NBA Cup itself, nobody seems to know what to make of the Magic. Are they a nice young team and a force in the Eastern Conference? Are they a potential contender?
Nobody seems to know. Not even Magic fans have a sense of this team's ceiling.
The NBA Cup may not have a lot of meaning to a lot of teams around the league. Established franchises like the Los Angeles Lakers, who won last year's inaugural trophy, may shoo away this competition knowing their standard is measured only in the trophies won in the summer.
But for a team like the Magic, the NBA Cup is everything.
It is not just about the Magic trying to win their first league-wide trophy. It is that the Magic are still looking to make a statement of intent. They are looking to prove to the rest of the league they are a force to be reckoned with.
They are trying to prove they are not just the team of the future, but the team of the present. The NBA Cup has mattered for the Magic to prove they are title contenders.
It starts with the stage they will get Tuesday night at Madison Square Garden. Going up against a fellow Eastern Conference contender on national TV is one of the Magic's first chances to defeat a quality team on a big stage.
It is a chance to tell the rest of the league they have arrived.
The Magic seeking attention
The Orlando Magic already saw the benefits of attention the team received when Franz Wagner defeated the Los Angeles Lakers with his game-winning 3-pointer.
That attention and narrative are valuable, but it is more about the confidence to beat the good teams in the league.
Orlando has been a nice story, but it is fair to say the team has feasted on bad teams.
The Orlando Magic, after all, have only two wins against teams currently above .500–the win over the Phoenix Suns (without Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal) and the Los Angeles Lakers. Last year, Orlando had the worst record among all playoff teams against teams with records better than .500 at 19-28.
If nobody is taking the Magic seriously yet, it is because they have yet to beat the best teams in the league consistently.
Good teams have to feast on the bad teams and those teams have rarely challenged the Magic. But these games—and the schedule through December and early January—will tell everyone just how real the Magic and their defense are.
And they have to do it without Paolo Banchero, who is not expected back until closer to Christmas at the end of the month.
This may be one reason no one is taking the Magic seriously yet. They recognize they are winning but they lack the marquee wins to be considered among the contending class. Orlando just is not in front of the eyeballs for it.
The NBA Cup and winning the NBA Cup changes that. All of those games are on national TV. The league has to promote it to make this experiment with an in-season tournament work.
A launching pad to contention
But these games should be a launching pad for contention too. Especially for young teams.
The Indiana Pacers were the breakout team of last year's In-Season Tournament and parlayed a trip into the championship game into a run to the Eastern Conference Finals.
Maybe there is not much correlation between the NBA Cup in December to the NBA Finals in June or the playoffs in April and May. The Los Angeles Lakers won the tournament and then struggled for the rest of the season.
This year's NBA Cup will see another up-and-coming team in the Houston Rockets advance. The Atlanta Hawks somehow won the group with the Boston Celtics and Cleveland Cavaliers. This is not the NBA Playoffs. There is more randomness involved, that is the element a single-elimination tournament brings.
The NBA Cup may just be a snapshot of who has it together the quickest—the Magic certainly qualify for that with the continuity on the roster.
The NBA Cup works because it gives everyone a chance to win something. And maybe that is enough reason to discard the results hat in hand.
But the Magic need all the experience they can get winning and winning big games. They still have a lot to prove to the rest of the league.
The NBA Cup may end up being like the Intercontinental Title in WWE or some other mid-card title. A lot of champions get their start winning the mid-card and proving they can carry the weight and attention of the title before competing for the big gold belt. Then again, there are a lot of forgettable champions who never could take the baton and run with it.
The Magic have gained from their experience in last year's NBA Cup and in their first playoff appearance. This year has only proven how much that experience is valuable to them.
For a young team like the Magic, winning the whole thing would be a rocket ship of confidence. They would have proof they can win big games and, more importantly they can win a trophy.
Winning an NBA title is a multi-year process. It is rare for teams to come together and find playoff success within a year. There are a lot of scars teams and players have to go through to get to the top of the mountain.
The Magic are considered one of the best young cores in the league— they had three players in ESPN's top 25 players under 25 years old including Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner at No. 3 and No. 4. Orlando's time at the top of the league is coming as the team continues to grow and build.
Nobody views the Magic as a championship team today. It is not clear if anybody views them as a serious threat yet in the future.
That will not happen until the Magic prove they can win these kinds of games.
They have left hints throughout including last year's playoff series. And the Orlando Magic should get the chance in the knockout round with a win on Tuesday to host a game (likely against the Boston Celtics) or as the wild card heading likely to face the Milwaukee Bucks with a loss of less than 30 points on Tuesday.
But Orlando has put itself in a position to win the NBA Cup and a trophy to the case. Doing so would be a big statement of the team's potential. Even if nobody knows what to make of this NBA Cup.