play0:19Luka’s 3-pointer gives him 32 points in the 1st halfLuka Doncic knocks down a step-back 3-pointer to give him 32 points in the first half for the Lakers.
Luka’s 43-point night helps Lakers clinch Group B (1:04)Luka Doncic drops 43 points, 13 assists and 9 rebounds to help the Lakers clinch a spot in the knockout stages of the NBA Cup. (1:04)
Luka’s 3-pointer gives him 32 points in the 1st halfLuka Doncic knocks down a step-back 3-pointer to give him 32 points in the first half for the Lakers.
Luka Doncic knocks down a step-back 3-pointer to give him 32 points in the first half for the Lakers.
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 continues as group play begins to wrap up this week and the knockout round matchups begin to take shape
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?
On Tuesday night, they officially clinched a chance to become the first team to win it a second time.
While the game was a nip-and-tuck affair through the first three quarters, tempers flared late in the fourth quarter after a foul by Kris Dunn on Doncic, eventually leading to a shoving match between Dunn and Lakers center Jaxson Hayes that resulted in Dunn being ejected.
That, though, was only a part of a night that saw the Lakers continue their brilliant start to the season, improving to 13-4 on the year and moving into a tie with the Denver Nuggets for the second-best record in the Western Conference.
Of short-term importance, though, was the locking in of one of the four Cup playoff spots in the Western Conference portion of the bracket.
Luka’s 3-pointer gives him 32 points in the 1st half
Meanwhile, in the Eastern Conference, there were a pair of blowouts — including one of the most surprising results of the entire season.
The Washington Wizards — who entered Tuesday’s action with a 1-15 record and with a staggering negative 15.5 net rating — blew out the Atlanta Hawks, winning 132-113 in a game Washington led by as many as 29 points to give the Wizards their first-ever NBA Cup win (this is the third year the event has existed).
To show how much that win was an outlier: it improved that season-long net rating for the Wizards by two entire points per 100 possessions in one night.
Atlanta had entered the night with a chance to be in position to be the wild card team out of the East. Instead, the Hawks are virtually eliminated heading into Friday’s final group stage game against the Cleveland Cavaliers.
The Orlando Magic, on the other hand, destroyed the injury-ravaged Philadelphia 76ers, winning 144-103 to move to 3-0 in East Group B, setting up a winner-take-all game Friday in Detroit against the East-leading Pistons.
But because the Magic won this game by such a ridiculous margin, Orlando now has a +61 scoring margin — the highest of any team in the Eastern Conference, and second only to the Oklahoma City Thunder (plus-63) of any team in the entire NBA.
No matter what happens in Pistons-Celtics on Wednesday in Boston, the winner of this group will be the winner of Friday’s game in Detroit between the Magic and Pistons. If Detroit can win a franchise-record 14th consecutive game, however, it would give Detroit at least a chance to be the top overall seed — though with a plus-27 point differential, they have a lot of work to do to catch Toronto.
A Pistons win would also mean only six teams would be alive to fill the final three spots: Orlando, Detroit, Cleveland, the Milwaukee Bucks, Miami Heat and New York Knicks.
Arguably, the game of the entire night across The Association Wednesday is in Miami, where Giannis Antetokounmpo has been upgraded to questionable with his groin strain for the Bucks, who are looking to advance to the Cup playoffs for a third consecutive season.
A win for the Bucks would eliminate the Heat and would clinch the group for Milwaukee if it is also paired with a Knicks loss in Charlotte on Wednesday, or with a Bucks win at Madison Square Garden on Friday.
A Miami victory would also clinch the group for the Heat with a Knicks loss either to Charlotte on Wednesday or to the Bucks on Friday. Already armed with a plus-46 point differential, Miami would also have a strong chance at a wild card spot if it can beat Milwaukee on Wednesday.
For the Knicks, the other team besides the Bucks to make the playoffs in each of the first two seasons of this event — though, unlike Milwaukee, the Knicks failed to reach Las Vegas in either of those first two trips — their fate this week is entirely in their hands. Because the Knicks previously beat Miami, wins over Charlotte on Wednesday and Milwaukee on Friday will guarantee the Knicks win the group, no matter what else happens.
With under a minute to go on Friday in Phoenix, it looked like Wednesday’s game between the Thunder and Minnesota Timberwolves would be for all the marbles in this group. But then Minnesota had a catastrophic collapse and lost to the Suns, and will find themselves all but certainly eliminated from advancing if they lose in OKC, despite currently boasting a gaudy plus-53 point differential.
The Thunder, meanwhile, are virtually assured of being the top seed in the West with wins over the Timberwolves on Wednesday and the Suns on Friday. Phoenix will improve to 3-0 and have a strong chance to at least be the wild card with a win against Sacramento on Wednesday.
The Lakers clinched this group with a win Tuesday night. But if Memphis can win against the New Orleans Pelicans on Wednesday and the Clippers on Friday, the Grizzlies will be 3-1 and have a chance to get the wild card.
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:
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.