Suns rally for dramatic win over Wolves (1:02)Phoenix goes on a late 9-0 run with under a minute to play to beat Minnesota 114-113. (1:02)
How will this impact the regular-season schedule and standings?
Are the semifinals and finals still being played in Las Vegas?
Will anyone earn individual honors for their play in NBA Cup games?
The third iteration of the Emirates NBA Cup continued on Friday, as we entered another week of group play.
LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers won the inaugural in-season tournament trophy in 2023, with James claiming the honors of tournament MVP. Last season, Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks raised their NBA Cup banner over the eventual NBA champions, the Oklahoma City Thunder.
But which team will claim its stake for the hardware in Las Vegas this year, and can it continue that tournament momentum into the postseason?
The Miami Heat have had the Chicago Bulls’ number in high-stakes games of late, eliminating Chicago in the play-in round three seasons in a row. It’s not play-in season yet, but the Heat did the next best thing Friday, all but eliminating the Bulls from the NBA Cup with a dominant win in Chicago.
It was a group effort for the Heat, who broke the game open with a 28-7 run to start the second quarter. Eight Miami players scored in double figures, led by big man Kel’el Ware’s 20 points. He and Bam Adebayo effectively blockaded the basket at the other end. The Heat led by 27 points through three quarters, at which point the Bulls were shooting just 14-of-29 (48%) at the rim.
NBA Cup play on Friday began with something of a yawn. The first four games of the night, all involving Eastern Conference matchups, were decided by an average margin of 21.3 points, and the four losing teams — the Indiana Pacers, Washington Wizards, Boston Celtics and Chicago Bulls — were all but eliminated from Cup contention with their second losses of the tournament.
But then the West came to play, and the Cup proceeded with a bang. The greatest narrative stakes came in West Group C, which features five of the top nine teams in the conference by record. Entering play Friday, all five of those teams — the Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers and San Antonio Spurs — were 1-1 in Cup play, setting up a pair of crucial late-night clashes.
Typically, the NBA sends out a full 82-game schedule in mid-August. Now, the league sends out only 80 games and leaves a gap for roughly a week to fill in later, depending on how the group stage of the NBA Cup plays out.
This also would only be an issue if one of the teams were playing on Dec. 9. If they’re playing Dec. 10, nothing will change. The other scheduling quirk is that there are currently eight teams — the Chicago Bulls, Cleveland Cavaliers, LA Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, Minnesota Timberwolves, Oklahoma City Thunder, San Antonio Spurs and Washington Wizards — scheduled to play on Dec. 17, the day after the championship game in Las Vegas.
Any team that makes it to the semifinals in Las Vegas would have that game moved later into the schedule to avoid back-to-back games. The NBA made this change in an effort to avoid having empty days on the calendar while attempting to minimize back-to-back games for all teams as much as possible.
Most of the games are being shown on Amazon Prime, including the knockout rounds. The schedule is also primarily on Fridays, beginning on Halloween, rather than bouncing back and forth from Tuesday to Friday throughout November as it did during the first two years of the tournament.
To create the groups, the NBA put all 15 teams in each conference into five pots, separated by their finish in last season’s standings. Pot 1 included the teams that finished 1-3 in regular-season record, teams 4-6 went into Pot 2, teams 7-9 into Pot 3, teams 10-12 into Pot 4, and teams 13-15 into Pot 5. As a result, the following groups were drawn:
The 10-6 Heat are now in a virtual tie for fourth place in the East, a strong position with All-Star guard Tyler Herro targeting a return from offseason ankle surgery next week. In Cup play, the Heat are 2-1 with a robust plus-46 point differential, and they’ll face a Milwaukee Bucks team likely missing Giannis Antetokounmpo in their final Cup game next Wednesday. Miami needs a win and some outside help to join the 3-0 Toronto Raptors, who clinched East Group A on Friday night, in the knockout rounds. — Zach Kram
Those games delivered on their potential. In Houston, the Nuggets overcame a 27-point explosion from Reed Sheppard to eke out a 112-109 win in a playoff-like atmosphere, thanks to a combined 60 points and 19 assists from Nikola Jokic and Jamal Murray. And in San Francisco, undrafted rookie guard Caleb Love was the surprise star, scoring a career-high 26 points to give Portland a hard-fought 127-123 win. Because Portland already beat Denver in group play, the Trail Blazers can clinch first place in the group with a win against San Antonio next week.
Elsewhere in the West, the Phoenix Suns used a 9-0 run in the final 50 seconds to stun the Minnesota Timberwolves 114-113 and remain undefeated in Cup play; just before that final spurt, the Timberwolves had a 98.9% chance of winning, according to ESPN Analytics’ win probability model. The Dallas Mavericks also scored the last seven points to beat the New Orleans Pelicans 118-115. And the Oklahoma City Thunder survived a scare from the Utah Jazz, thanks to a 33-4 run over the final seven minutes of the third quarter. — Kram
NBA commissioner Adam Silver has had a long-standing fascination with European soccer. Establishing an in-season cup competition within the NBA schedule came from soccer leagues having both a regular-season title, won by the team with the most points over the full year, and a separate tournament (or, in some leagues, multiple tournaments) that runs concurrently with the league season. In England, for example, there are the various divisions — led by the Premier League — and also the FA Cup competition. But unlike those European leagues, which play their cup competitions outside of their league schedules, the NBA Cup is built into the regular-season slate. The 30 NBA teams are split into six five-team groups — three featuring Eastern Conference teams, and three comprising Western Conference teams — with each team then playing one game against the other four in its group. The winner of each group, plus the team with the best record among the non-group winners, will then advance to the knockout stage of the competition.
The teams that reach the NBA Cup’s finale will actually play 83 games — though the championship game won’t count toward the standings or any statistical markers. All four teams that make it to Las Vegas for the semifinals will have completed their 82 games, and won’t need anything else added. The additional wrinkle added to this year’s schedule is the possibility that a few dates on the calendar may move around. On Dec. 8, there are currently three games scheduled: the Sacramento Kings at the Indiana Pacers; the Phoenix Suns at the Minnesota Timberwolves; and the San Antonio Spurs at the New Orleans Pelicans. If any of those teams are playing in the quarterfinals, taking place on Dec. 9 and 10, those games would move to Dec. 7 (a decision that would be made by Nov. 29, the day after the end of the group stage).
Before its launch, one of the main questions surrounding the in-season tournament was why any team would be incentivized to compete in it. The NBA ensured teams will be motivated by making every game part of the season — and, being in-conference, potentially important from a playoff-tiebreaker standpoint. If this had been set up like the cup tournaments in European soccer, there would have been nothing stopping NBA teams from opting out, literally or figuratively — sitting their top players for extra rest.
In 2023, the first year the tournament was held, the players on the winning team received $500,000 each, while those on the runners-up got $200,000. The losing players of the semifinals each got $100,000, and those ousted in the quarterfinals each got $50,000. Now, in each subsequent year, the prizes will be slightly higher, as a result of negotiated raises year over year to keep pace with increases in the salary cap and basketball-related income as part of the most recent collective bargaining agreement between the NBA and the National Basketball Players Association.
Suns rally for dramatic win over Wolves (1:02)Phoenix goes on a late 9-0 run with under a minute to play to beat Minnesota 114-113. (1:02)
West C: Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs
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Miami stomps Chicago to set up critical East Group C showdown
There will be an MVP award, as well as an all-tournament team.
The league struck a sponsorship deal with Emirates, the Dubai-based airline, to sponsor the tournament after its initial run. The NBA said last year that it went with the most basic titles for both the tournament and its trophy — the “in-season tournament” and “NBA Cup” — as a way to introduce the concept to fans. However, using such nondescript names had another clear advantage: It gave the league a blank slate in case the tournament and cup became properties it ended up selling to a sponsor, and avoided the complications that could arise by naming them after someone (for example, the late NBA commissioner David Stern, one possibility that had been floated before the tournament was officially unveiled).
Phoenix goes on a late 9-0 run with under a minute to play to beat Minnesota 114-113. (1:02)
East A: Cleveland Cavaliers, Indiana Pacers, Atlanta Hawks, Toronto Raptors, Washington Wizards
East B: Boston Celtics, Detroit Pistons, Orlando Magic, Brooklyn Nets, Philadelphia 76ers
East C: New York Knicks, Milwaukee Bucks, Chicago Bulls, Miami Heat, Charlotte Hornets
West A: Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, Sacramento Kings, Phoenix Suns, Utah Jazz