The NBA’s efforts to add a little excitement to the doldrums of its regular season will return on Tuesday evening. For the second straight year, the league will hold its new cup competition, now known as the Emirates NBA Cup. The first year was fun, with the Los Angeles Lakers winning the whole thing by knocking off the Indiana Pacers in Las Vegas, and now, the NBA will continue its efforts to turn this nascent event into a crucial part of its calendar.
What does this all mean? Well, we tried to answer that today by explaining what’s new this year, how the whole thing will work, and why we’re excited to watch this as it tries to become a tentpole event on the NBA calendar.
So is this just the In-Season Tournament but with a new name?
It is! While the NBA has never explicitly said this, my assumption is that they spent the first year calling it the In-Season Tournament so fans would get a sense of what it is before calling it what they always wanted to call it: The NBA Cup, or more specifically, the Emirates NBA Cup. Or maybe they just couldn’t find a sponsor in the first year.
What’s that Emirates thing? I’ve seen its logo on courts but never actually looked into what it is.
It’s an airline based out of the United Arab Emirates that sponsors a lot of stuff. They’re sponsoring this event, which is the second-best thing that the NBA does, and fortunately, Emirates has plenty of experience sponsoring the second-best thing, as they are the shirt sponsor for Arsenal.
What?
Just let me cook.
Ok, so, any major differences from last year other than the name?
A big one are the courts. Last year, they came under criticism from players (who kept slipping on them) and fans (who thought some were huge eyesores, particularly because of the weird, cumbersome stripe they had going down the middle of the courts). They’re not nearly as bad this year, as they replaced the stripe with rings in the center of the floor and got rid of some of the more abrasive designs that just do not work on television. I’m sure not everyone will love them, but I think they are a huge improvement on last year — we just have to see if players struggle with their footing on them, or else the aesthetic changes do not matter at all.
What about point differential? I know some players disliked that.
Well, that’s still sticking around as a potential tiebreaker for which teams do and do not advance. Frankly, I think it’s fine and we saw last year that some of the European players were trying to egg their teammates on — Domantas Sabonis was the main one I remember — but it’ll still take a bit of a shift for everyone to get on board with it.
Remind me how determining how teams advance will work again?
Sure! Right from the league:
So the easiest way to move on is to just win your group and not worry about any tiebreakers.
That is correct.
Well then, what do the groups look like?
Once again, the NBA broke things up into three groups of five teams in each conference — this will, hopefully, look a lot cleaner when expansion happens, we get up to 32 teams, and they can do groups of four in each conference where each team plays group games home and away. The group games will happen on Tuesdays and Fridays starting tonight and running through Dec. 3.
Here’s how it all looks:
West Group A: Minnesota, LA Clippers, Sacramento, Houston, Portland
West Group B: Oklahoma City, Phoenix, LA Lakers, Utah, San Antonio
West Group C: Denver, Dallas, New Orleans, Golden State, Memphis
East Group A: New York, Orlando, Philadelphia, Brooklyn, Charlotte
East Group B: Milwaukee, Indiana, Miami, Toronto, Detroit
East Group C: Boston, Cleveland, Chicago, Atlanta, Washington
How do these teams qualify for the knockouts?
Same as last year — win your group and you get a spot. Both conferences then get one remaining spot for a wild card team, which goes to the best remaining team that did not automatically qualify by winning its group. This is probably where those aforementioned tiebreakers would come in, but you never know.
And will the knockouts work like last year, too?
Yup! Single-elimination basketball games, with the quarterfinals happening on-site at home arenas and the semifinals and final happening in Las Vegas. The quarters are on Dec. 10 and 11, the semis are on Dec. 14, and the final is on Dec. 17.
And are these games all considered regular season games, too?
For the most part they are — group games, the quarters, and the semis will all count towards regular season records again, while the championship game will not.
So it looks a lot like last year, then.
That’s right, the league has, essentially, decided to keep a lot of things the same other than the name and the courts. Oh, also, as a programming note: home teams will wear their Statement Edition uniforms, while road teams wear their Association edition uniforms, according to the league.
Huh, well then, ok.
You don’t seem enthused about all of this, dear reader.
Yeah, I mean, I am still unsure why I should care about this.
Well that’s easy: You don’t have to! You’re an adult with agency and the ability to care about whatever you want, times are tough, maybe you don’t want to get super personally invested in a new thing the NBA is doing, that’s fine.
But you seem to like this.
I do!
Why?
I think a big split I have noticed here is “fans who like soccer” and “fans who do not,” with the former being more open to the idea of a midseason cup competition — Adam Silver has compared the NBA Cup to the FA Cup in English football, but basically every domestic league has a secondary cup competition.
The thing is that these competitions are universally considered not as important as winning the league, but they are still important because it’s an opportunity to win something historic and provide some validation for a team’s season. The NBA Cup is only in its second year, so clearly, it has a way to go before it gets taken that seriously — the whole saga with the Lakers debating putting up a little banner is an example of this.
But the FA Cup, for example, is not considered cool because everyone farts around and then Manchester City wins it at the end. It’s considered cool because teams from several levels of English football have a chance to win it, and sometimes, you get magical runs to the very end. We got a glimpse of what that could look like last year when the Indiana Pacers nearly won the whole thing. Hell, if not for the fact that they’re the Lakers, it’d probably be viewed as proof of concept that the final was between a Play-In team and an upstart young squad trying to win something for the first time. That is, to steal a phrase from the English, the magic of the cup.
So acknowledging that this isn’t as important as winning the NBA Finals is fine?
One-hundred percent. The longer the NBA sticks with this — and, let’s face it, Silver is essentially staking his legacy as a commissioner on this becoming a big deal — the more likely it is that it’ll settle into a spot where fans/franchises like that it is a thing that they can win, all while understanding that the big prize is still waiting for them in June. It helps, of course, that there’s a financial incentive to do well.
Remind me what that is.
Sure! Players whose teams make the quarterfinals make $50,000, players whose teams make the semifinals make $100,000, players on the runners-up make $200,000, and players on the team that wins the whole thing makes $500,000.
Nice.
I agree.
Anyway, this sounds like, bare minimum, a thing I can have on my television on Tuesdays and Fridays.
It is, and really, if that’s all that comes from this for the next year or two, that’s totally fine. Something like this will only become a big deal the more it happens and the more it becomes ingrained as part of the sport’s culture, and as long as this year is a step towards doing that, I’m sure it’ll all work out in the long-run.
Nice. Well, I suppose I can tune in.
That you can, and if you want to know what games are on, when they’re on, and which networks they’ll be on, you can click right here.
