SGA leads Thunder to 19-1 record with 37-point game (2:06)Shai Gilgeous-Alexander tallies 37 points and 8 assists in the Thunder’s win over the Suns. (2:06)
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 wraps up Friday 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 stake its claim for the hardware in Las Vegas this season, and can it continue that tournament momentum into the postseason?
Only two teams had clinched spots in the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup heading into Friday’s final night of group stage action. With several head-to-head showdowns for quarterfinal spots, the opportunity was there for a fun night of basketball across the Association.
Several critical games came down to the final seconds. And, when the dust settled, the quarterfinal field was set with a nice blend of the game’s longstanding stars, as well as a smattering of up-and-coming teams from across the league.
Not surprisingly, the top overall seed from group stage play wound up being the league’s top team, the Oklahoma City Thunder, who improved to 19-1 overall with a 123-119 victory over the Phoenix Suns, their 11th in a row.
Phoenix, though, made Oklahoma City work for all 48 minutes to eventually pull out the victory, as Collin Gillespie nearly came up with an incredible steal that would’ve given the Suns a chance to tie or win the game in the final seconds. However, he couldn’t save the ball to a teammate, and Oklahoma City escaped with the victory.
The Thunder’s reward for that win? A quarterfinal rematch with the Suns back in Oklahoma City on either Dec. 9 or 10.
The Orlando Magic knew going into their game in Detroit on Friday that a win would allow them to clinch the No. 1 seed in the East. And, for much of the game, it looked like Orlando would take care of that, as the lead hovered around a 10-point advantage for much of the night.
But a furious close by the Pistons gave them a chance to tie the score when Cade Cunningham had a brilliant intentional free throw miss in the closing seconds, with it ricocheting directly back to him so he could kick it out to Duncan Robinson for a potential tying 3-pointer. Robinson missed, however, and Orlando escaped with a 110-107 victory — and, with it, the top spot in the group.
The Knicks and Bucks entered the night as the only teams to have qualified for the knockout rounds in each of its first two iterations. And, by the time the game reached its final few minutes Friday night, only one of them would get the chance to do so for a third time, with the winner guaranteed of advancing and the loser guaranteed to be eliminated.
Giannis Antetokounmpo put up 30 points, 15 rebounds and 8 assists in 28 minutes in his return from a groin strain, but it was New York that prevailed with a 118-109 victory. Jalen Brunson finished with 37 points, including an and-1 layup with 1:27 remaining that allowed the Knicks to prevail.
New York will head to Toronto to face the Raptors, who went 4-0 and clinched one of the top two seeds in group stage action with Brandon Ingram’s game-winning jumper against the Indiana Pacers on Wednesday night. Toronto needed the Pistons to beat the Magic to claim the top spot because the Magic sported a better point differential.
That meant the Spurs, who could potentially have Wembanyama back in time for the quarterfinals in 10 days, will travel to Los Angeles to play the Lakers in the quarterfinals. Luka Doncic & Co. closed out group play with a victory over Anthony Davis and the Dallas Mavericks. — Tim Bontemps
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.
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.
SGA leads Thunder to 19-1 record with 37-point game (2:06)Shai Gilgeous-Alexander tallies 37 points and 8 assists in the Thunder’s win over the Suns. (2:06)
West C: Houston Rockets, Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs
Jump to: Takeaways | FAQ | Schedule | Cup standings
The Magic will host the Heat in the quarterfinals after Miami — which went 3-1 in group stage action and was plus-49 after closing out play with a win over the Milwaukee Bucks on Wednesday — was locked into the wild-card spot by virtue of the New York Knicks beating the Bucks at Madison Square Garden on Friday night.
There will be an MVP award, as well as an all-tournament team.
San Antonio had entered the week knowing that two victories — at Portland on Wednesday and at Denver on Friday — would be enough to allow the Spurs to advance. But the Spurs doing it exactly how they did wouldn’t have been how anyone would’ve predicted it, with Devin Vassell scoring 35 points on 12-for-17 shooting, including 7-for-9 from 3, and Justin Champagnie adding 25 as they outdueled Jamal Murray (37 points) and Nikola Jokic (21 points, 9 rebounds, 10 assists) in the 139-136 Spurs victory.
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).