The NBA is back with its in-season tournament for the second straight season, and this time, it’s been rebranded to the NBA Cup. The Lakers won the inaugural regular-season tourney last season, beating the Pacers in Las Vegas. Now, all 30 teams have a chance to hoist the trophy as tournament play begins Tuesday across the league.
And, yes, the NBA is back with its wacky, colorful courts for a second straight year. That‘s part of the sell of the NBA Cup where the league wants to get more people wondering what’s special to drum up more interest. So that’s why every NBA Cup has these special courts — all 30 unique courts can be seen here. Importantly, all NBA Cup games will count toward every team‘s regular-season record. There is one exception: The finals won‘t count toward a team’s record or a player’s stats for the season.
“I think it‘s fun,” Jrue Holiday said. “I think we push for something else in the middle of the season. To be able to win a cup and get to Vegas is something I think every team should push for. I feel like that‘s something we’re trying to do. Obviously win every single game but knowing this is a tournament, another milestone that we can get.”
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The NBA Cup rules are straightforward with not much changed from last year. All 30 teams have been randomly selected into six different groups based on win-loss record from the 2023-24 season. There are three groups in each conference: East A, East B, East C, West A, West B and West B.
Here’s a look at each group:
East A: Knicks, Magic, 76ers, Nets, Hornets
East B: Bucks, Pacers, Heat, Raptors, Pistons
East C: Celtics, Cavaliers, Bulls, Hawks, Wizards
West A: Timberwolves, Clippers, Kings, Rockets, Trail Blazers
West B: Thunder, Suns, Lakers, Jazz, Spurs
West C: Nuggets, Mavericks, Pelicans, Warriors, Grizzlies
NBA Cup games will start Tuesday with group play and continue through Dec. 3. Each team will play four games against the rest of their group as part of group play. The top team in each group will advance to the quarterfinals with one “wild card” selected from each conference. The wild card team will be picked based off of tiebreakers, which include point differential, total points and more. That ended up mattering in East C, where the Celtics, Magic and Nets were tied atop the standings at 3-1, but the C‘s advanced due to having the best point differential. (As a note, overtime scoring won’t count toward point differential as each team will get a “0″ in that regard, regardless of the final score.)
From there, the knockout stages are all single-elimination games. The quarterfinals will be played Dec. 10-11 at home markets. The semifinals (Dec. 14) and finals (Dec. 17) will be played in Las Vegas. Teams losing in group play or in the quarterfinals will have new games added to their schedule as typical regular-season games.
The winners of the NBA Cup will get the trophy and $500,000 for each player. Losing in the championship game is a $200,000 bonus. There are also winnings for making it to the semifinals ($100,000) and quarterfinals ($50,000). There will also be a tournament MVP and All-Tournament team. The Lakers raised a banner for winning the tourney last year.
