While it is not being called the In-Season Tournament this year, the newly named NBA Cup is hoping to have the same kind of success that last year's NBA In-Season Tournament had. The groups for this year's NBA Cup were revealed tonight and the Atlanta Hawks are being placed in East Group C with the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls, and Washington Wizards.
— Atlanta Hawks (@ATLHawks) July 12, 2024Hawks
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WizardsNBA Cup starts Nov. 12 pic.twitter.com/rwCgUeZXQu
Here is how the NBA Cup works, courtesy of nba.com:
"The Emirates NBA Cup 2024, the NBA’s second annual in-season competition, will tip off on Tuesday, Nov. 12 in team markets and culminate with the Semifinals (Saturday, Dec. 14) and Championship (Tuesday, Dec. 17) taking place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The complete schedule will be released in August.
The Emirates NBA Cup will consist of two stages:Group Playand theKnockout Rounds.
> A. Group Play
All 30 teams have been randomly drawn into groups of five within their conference based on win-loss records from the 2023-24 regular season. Beginning Tuesday, Nov. 12 and continuing through Tuesday, Dec. 3, each team will play four designated Group Play games on “Cup Nights” – one game against each opponent in its group, with two games at home and two on the road.
Eight teams will advance to the Knockout Rounds: the team with the best standing in Group Play games in each of the six groups and two “wild cards” (the team from each conference with the best record in Group Play games that finished second in its group). The Knockout Rounds will consist of single-elimination games in the Quarterfinals (played in NBA team markets on Tuesday, Dec. 10 and Wednesday, Dec. 11) and Semifinals and Championship (played in Las Vegas on Dec. 14 and Dec. 17, respectively). The Knockout teams will compete for a prize pool and the NBA Cup championship trophy.
All 67 games across both stages of the Emirates NBA Cup will count toward the regular-season standings except the Championship. Each team will continue to play 82 regular-season games in the 2024-25 season, including those games that are part of Group Play and the Knockout Rounds.
Fourteen games in Group Play (two games on each Cup Night) and all seven games in the Knockout Rounds will be televised nationally. The game and broadcast schedules for the Emirates NBA Cup Group Play stage will be announced in August.
The Knockout Rounds will consist of single-elimination games for the eight teams that advance from Group Play, beginning with the Quarterfinals on Dec. 10-11. Teams that win will progress to the neutral-site Semifinals on Dec. 14, and then the Championship on Dec. 17.
Games played in the first and second rounds of the Knockout Rounds (i.e., Quarterfinals and Semifinals, respectively) will count as regular-season-games for all purposes. The Championship will not be counted as a regular-season game, meaning that the game will not count toward a team’s regular-season record, and a player’s or team’s performance will not count toward regular-season statistics.
In each conference, Quarterfinal games will be hosted by the two teams with the best record in Group Play games, and the team with the best record in Group Play games will host the wild card team. In the event two or more teams are tied for the higher seed in a conference, the tie among the teams will be broken following the same tiebreaker protocol as described above.
During the Knockout Rounds on days when Emirates NBA Cup games are not scheduled (Dec. 12-13 and Dec. 15-16), the 22 teams that do not qualify for the Knockout Rounds will each play two regular-season games.
A formulaic approach will determine the matchups for these games using the Group Play standings in each conference (5th-15th). Two of the 22 games will be scheduled cross-conference since there will be an odd number of teams in each conference that do not advance to the Quarterfinals. These cross-conference games will be scheduled between bottom- finishing teams in the Group Play stage subject to travel constraints, and no team will play more than one of its two games cross-conference. The other 20 games will be scheduled within conference featuring teams that are otherwise scheduled to play each other three times over the course of the season wherever possible.
The losing teams from the Quarterfinals in each conference will play each other in a regular-season game on Dec. 12, 13, 15 or 16."
This is not an unwinnable group for the Hawks, though being able to beat the defending NBA champion Celtics will be a challenge. Boston might be without Kristaps Porzingis however. Cleveland is returning a talented starting lineup and will be viewed as the biggest challengers to the Celtics. Washington and Chicago will be among the worst teams in the league.
