NBA Cup 2024: Schedule, format and new tweaks for this year’s in-season tournament

The 2024 Emirates NBA Cup begins Tuesday, and it feels like Adam Silver’s dream of making early-season games have more at stake is here to stay.

The Los Angeles Lakers took home the inaugural in-season tournament title in Las Vegas last year, beating the Indiana Pacers in the final. The New Orleans Pelicans and Milwaukee Bucks also earned a trip to Vegas for the semifinals.

The NBA will continue to tweak various elements of the event, and after consulting with the participants, the league feels it has come up with an even more effective way of implementing this new staple.

Evan Wasch, NBA executive vice president of NBA basketball strategy and analytics, spoke with Yahoo Sports recently about the NBA Cup. In Year 1, he said, the scores for group play were closer than the average NBA game, TV ratings were 18% higher than regular-season games, attendance was higher as evidenced by last November breaking league records, and social media engagement was “off the charts” — along with the Lakers’ NBA cup win being viewed by nearly 5 million people, a number that isn’t typically reached until the league’s Christmas Day matchups.

Games for group play will still be held Tuesdays and Fridays, and there will still be separate standings until group play is decided. The tournament will conclude in mid-December with the semifinals and a final taking place in Las Vegas.

Here’s what you need to know for Year 2 of the NBA Cup.

What is the NBA Cup schedule?

• Group Play: Nov. 12-Dec. 3 (Tuesdays and Fridays)

• Quarterfinals: Dec. 10, 11

• Semifinals: Dec. 14

• Championship: Dec. 17

Are the NBA Cup courts back?

For most viewers, the courts were eyesores, the bright colors being such a stark difference to the usual hardwood and center-court logo design everyone is used to. The court designs of the New Orleans Pelicans, Phoenix Suns and Utah Jazz stood out in that regard last year, among others.

But the designs did accomplish the goal of drawing attention to the night and letting fans know that it was an NBA Cup game. It didn’t always play well on television, though, an expected consequence. In one instance with the Dallas Mavericks, the court wasn’t even functional for tournament play, due to a manufacturing defect.

Like everything else in this endeavor, alterations were coming.

“I won’t say shock value, but the differentiation of those courts, I think, is particularly important in Year 1, not just from a fan perspective, but we even heard from players,” Wasch said. “What we heard from players after the tournament was some of them maybe even forgot that something was a tournament game. But the minute they came out of the tunnel and saw that court, they immediately paused and said, ‘Oh, this is different. Something different is going on.’ And I think the most surprising part was how much the courts translated to the feeling of something big taking place.”

In general, the floors will return, even if some of the courts will look a bit more muted.

“Every team with their background, their watermark unique to their city or their traditional court,” Wasch said. “In a case like Boston with parquet, we just thought that allowed for a little more team branding to be layered on top of what otherwise was a league initiative last year.”

The league worked with the teams and with artist Victor Solomon to strike a balance between shock value and sensibility.

How will group play work?

The formula hasn’t changed for group play. All 30 teams were randomly drawn into groups of five based on last season’s regular-season records, creating three divisions in each conference. Each team will play four group-play games, one against each opponent in its group, two at home and two on the road.

“So in each conference, we take the top three teams, we put them in a pot, the fourth through six, they’re in a pot, seven through nine, etc. And then to create the groups, you pull one team out of each pot,” Wasch said.

East Group A

• New York Knicks

• Orlando Magic

• Philadelphia 76ers

• Brooklyn Nets

• Charlotte Hornets

East Group B

• Milwaukee Bucks

• Indiana Pacers

• Miami Heat

• Toronto Raptors

• Detroit Pistons

East Group C

• Boston Celtics

• Cleveland Cavaliers

• Chicago Bulls

• Atlanta Hawks

• Washington Wizards

West Group A

• Minnesota Timberwolves

• LA Clippers

• Sacramento Kings

• Houston Rockets

• Portland Trail Blazers

West Group B

• Oklahoma City Thunder

• Phoenix Suns

• Los Angeles Lakers

• Utah Jazz

• San Antonio Spurs

West Group C

• Denver Nuggets

• Dallas Mavericks

• New Orleans Pelicans

• Golden State Warriors

• Memphis Grizzlies

The league considered making it identical to the actual NBA divisions, but decided against that because of divisional strength. Take the Northwest division — there are three title contenders in Oklahoma City, Denver and Minnesota. That would be disproportionate to, say, the Southwest division, which includes Memphis, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and New Orleans.

“And so what you get is, each year you’re going to get different groupings for the group stage of the tournament,” Wasch said. “We talked about, should we just use divisions? Because divisions are five teams, but then you get the same teams playing each year in the group. And so we thought spreading out those top teams would lead to sort of more competitive outcomes and also more storylines.”

One general manager suggested keeping the groups the same way year after year, to develop continuity and perhaps stoke rivalries regardless of the year-to-year records and the lottery nature of the draw — think the first meeting between San Antonio’s Victor Wembanyama and Oklahoma City’s Chet Holmgren last season, an in-season tournament game in Oklahoma last November.

The league decided against it, however.

What about the knockout stage?

Eight teams will advance from group play to the knockout rounds: the six group winners and two wild cards. The wild cards are the teams from each conference that finished with the best records among the second-place teams in group play.

Unlike last season, overtime scoring will not be a factor in tiebreaker outcomes.

“(Warriors coach) Steve Kerr had a comment after the final group stage game, whether joking or not, that they considered whether to intentionally send the game to overtime to run out the score, to try to win by the 12 points they needed to advance to the knockout rounds,” Wasch said.

So to preserve the integrity of the games and prevent some contentious finishes, they removed overtime scoring from point differential and total points tiebreakers.

The single-elimination games of the NBA Cup quarterfinals will be held Dec. 10 and 11. The higher-seeded teams will host the quarters in their home arenas. The four winners will advance to the semifinals in Las Vegas.

(During the knockout stage, the 22 teams that didn’t qualify will each play two to-be-determined, regular-season games.)

What happens in Vegas?

Las Vegas, the home of NBA Summer League and prospective home of an expansion team, serves as ground zero for the NBA Cup semifinals and final on Dec. 14 and Dec. 17, respectively.

For the four teams, spending a few days in Las Vegas in December could certainly serve as incentive to put extra effort into these games, along with a monetary prize for the winning team that nets $500,000 per player. (The runner-up receives $200,000 per player.)

Las Vegas served as a pseudo-home game for the Lakers last year because of the proximity compared to New Orleans, Milwaukee and Indianapolis. Add in the quick turnaround from the quarterfinals, and it was difficult to create a true home-court advantage for the teams outside of L.A.

“It’s a double-edged sword,” Wasch admitted.

They’ve added an extra day in between the semifinals and final, along with avoiding the NFL schedule, to create for a better atmosphere for fans. They believe they’ve made it more accessible overall.

“And by virtue of having the semifinals on this Saturday, it’s a little bit easier to conceive of a fan maybe wanting to make a Vegas trip for the weekend, as opposed to flying out to Vegas for a game that tipped at 2 p.m. on a Thursday,” Wasch said. “Many of our fans work, and so that was that was a real challenge. So we think we’ve eased up the opportunity for fans who do want to attend that Saturday semifinal doubleheader.

“This thing may rise to the level years down the road where it becomes such an integral part of the season of the competition that you do get that energy and that attendance, but at least, we think we’ve made it easier, and we do think we’ll see a little bit more excitement and attraction from fans, let’s say, outside of the L.A. (market).”

And it also puts Las Vegas in the center of basketball conversation for something besides Summer League, in the heart of the NBA season.