13 November 2024

The NBA Cup Is Here. What Is It?

NBA Cup
Last year's NBA’s In-Season Tournament was considered as a success based on almost all metrics. The league set an attendance record that November, and TV audience for tournament game windows grew 26 percent compared to 2022. The championship game between the Indiana Pacers and the Los Angeles Lakers was the second most-watched game of the season excluding the playoffs. Most importantly, players and coaches bought in.

It will return this year, rebranded as the Emirates NBA Cup. Here's a list of everything about the tournament.

What is the NBA Cup?
The NBA Cup, previously known as the In-Season Tournament, is a relatively new event that takes place during the regular season. This will be the second iteration of the tournament. The format was agreed upon by the league and the National Basketball Players Association in the collective bargaining agreement signed in June 2023.

How does the NBA Cup work?
The 30 NBA teams were divided into six groups of five teams. Each team will play the other members of its group once. Then eight teams will advance to a single-elimination tournament. The team in each group with the best record in group-play games will advance, along with the team from each conference with the best record in group-play games that finished second in its group.

The knockout stage will culminate in a championship game to determine the winner of the NBA Cup.

What are the NBA Cup tiebreakers? If multiple teams are tied for first place in a group, or for the conference "wild card" spot, the tie will be broken according to the following, in sequential order:

  • Group stage head-to-head
  • Group stage point differential
  • Group stage total points scored
  • 2023-24 regular season record
  • Random drawing
What NBA teams make up the groups?
Each team was placed into a "pot" based on its 2023-24 regular-season record. In each conference, one team was selected from each pot and placed into each of the three groups in that conference. Pot 1 had the teams with the three best records in the conference, Pot 2 had the teams with the fourth- through sixth-best records in the conference, and so on.

When is the NBA Cup 2024?
Most of the NBA Cup schedule is already set. Group play games will occur on Tuesdays and Fridays between 12 November and 3 December, called "Cup Nights." All NBA games on those nights are NBA Cup games but also count in the regular season standings.

For the knockout stage, two quarterfinal games each will be played on Tuesday, 10 December, and Wednesday, 11 December. Both semifinals matchups will take place on Saturday, 14 December, and the championship will be on Tuesday, 17 December. The final is the lone game in the NBA Cup that does not count for a team’s regular season record.

Where is the NBA Cup played?
All group-play games, in addition to the quarterfinals, will be played in NBA team markets. The semifinals and championship will be held at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, which is a neutral site.

How will the NBA Cup impact the regular season?
All NBA Cup games count as regular season games in the standings except for the championship, which exists outside of the regular season.

To ensure that every team plays exactly 82 regular-season games, the 22 teams that do not qualify for the knockout round will play two additional regular-season games on NBA Cup off nights during December. The four teams that lose in the quarterfinals of the tournament will play one additional regular-season game in December against the opponent from the same conference.

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