The NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament in 2023 was a success based on almost all metrics. The league set an attendance record that November and TV audience for tournament game windows grew 26% over the prior year. 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. Even though you’re familiar with the concept of the tournament from last season, you may not remember all the nuts and bolts of how it works, or the slight changes that have been made. So, we’ve compiled a list of everything you need to know.
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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:
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Group stage head-to-head
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Group stage point differential
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Group stage total points scored
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2023-24 regular season record
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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 Nov. 12 and Dec. 3, 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, Dec. 10, and Wednesday, Dec. 11. Both semifinals matchups will take place on Saturday, Dec. 14, and the championship will be on Tuesday, Dec. 17. 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.
What is the NBA Cup prize money distribution for players?
The payouts for players whose teams advance to the knockout stage are as follows:
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Champions – $500,000
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Runners-up – $200,000
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Semifinals Losers – $100,000
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Quarterfinals Losers – $50,000
Of the 440 players with 2024-25 salaries listed on Spotrac, 278 of them will earn less than $10 million, meaning that an NBA Cup win would result in at least a 5% bonus for the majority of the league’s players.
Are there awards for the NBA Cup?
There will be a Most Valuable Player for the tournament and an All-Tournament Team, with selections based on both the group play and knockout stages.
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.
What is different about the NBA Cup in 2024?
The NBA’s colorful courts for last season’s tournament drew (and perhaps blinded) some eyeballs. This year will once again have special courts, designed by artist Victor Solomon this time, but they are not quite as loud as last year’s, and the league involved team creative directors to give franchises more customization.
Notably, the knockout rounds are on different days of the week from last year, perhaps to avoid competition with the NFL.
There are no major changes to the format of the tournament itself. A minor one, however, is that overtime scoring will not count towards point differential tiebreakers. This is to prevent a situation that arose last year in which a team leading narrowly towards the end a game could potentially benefit by going to overtime and winning by a larger margin.
What is the point of the NBA Cup?
The NBA regular season is long, with 82 games played over a period of nearly six months. Superstars are sitting out more nights than ever. Playoff outcomes feel increasingly detached from regular season results, as an 8-seed made the Finals two seasons ago. The NBA Cup adds intrigue to the regular season, particularly during a stretch of the year when fan attention is easily siphoned away by the NFL and college football.
It’s also about the money. The NBA agreed to a new package of media rights deals with ESPN, NBC and Amazon prior to the 2024-25 season, and a popular inaugural run of the NBA Cup gave the league another selling point in negotiations with those partners. The NBA also earns revenue from Emirates’ naming rights sponsorship, and there are more untapped sponsorship opportunities associated with the tournament.
In the words of NBA executive vice president of Basketball Strategy & Analytics Evan Wasch last year, “The In-Season Tournament will provide a new opportunity for teams and players to compete in an exciting format, build their legacies, chase an early-season championship and raise the NBA Cup. It will add must-win games in the early part of our season while creating something new and different for fan bases to celebrate and rally around.”
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