NBA Cup rules, format and tiebreakers

In 2023, the NBA added a new layer of excitement to its regular season with the introduction of its In-Season Tournament. After a well-received debut, won by the Los Angeles Lakers, the league is looking to build on the success with a rebranded Emirates NBA Cup for 2024, spicing up the standard 82-game grind.

With shades of popular European soccer tournaments, the NBA Cup gives fans and teams extra excitement by bringing a playoff-like intensity to the early part of the season. The high-stakes games offer teams the chance to compete for a mid-season title—and a cash prize for each player on the winning team. They've even got a special ball to use during the tournament games.

Understanding the NBA Cup rules, format, and tiebreakers is essential for fans who want to follow along with each team’s journey. The tournament is split into group play, followed by a knockout round for those that advance. With the tournament format and built-in tiebreakers, the NBA Cup format offers something new and complex to navigate.

Here, we'll break down everything you need to know to track the action and make sense of how it all unfolds.

Subscribe to The Whiteboard, FanSided’s daily email newsletter on everything basketball. If you like The Whiteboard, share it with a friend! If you don’t like The Whiteboard, share it with an enemy.

NBA Cup group play

The NBA Cup consists of a relatively familiar format, which includes Group Play and a subsequent Knockout Rounds, like you might see in the Olympics. With the exception of the championship game, all games in Group Play and the Knockout Round will count toward the season's 82-game standings at the end of the season.

All 30 teams participate in the tournament, so there's something to play for across the entire league. The teams were drawn into three groups of five within their respective conferences from which to build the Group Play schedule.

Western Conference Groups

Eastern Conference Groups

For those interested in how the groups were drawn, the NBA offers an explanation of their process for you:

Before the drawing, each team was placed into a "pot" based on its record from the prior regular season (2023-24). In each conference, one team from each pot was randomly selected into each of the three groups in that conference. The pots were as follows:

• Pot 1: The teams with the three best prior-season records in a conference.
• Pot 2: The teams with the fourth- through sixth-best prior-season records.
• Pot 3: The teams with the seventh- through ninth-best prior-season records.
• Pot 4: The teams with the 10th- through 12th-best prior-season records.
• Pot 5: The teams with the 13th- through 15th-best prior-season records.

Group Play consists of four games (two home, two road) within each group, where each team plays the other teams in their group once. NBA Cup games will occur every Tuesday and Friday night from Nov. 12 - Dec. 3. If you're unsure whether the game you're watching is an NBA Cup game, just look for the crazy courts. Each team only faces its group opponents once, creating a luck-of-the-draw factor. The home and away matchups are random, which may influence the outcomes.

Once Group Play is complete, team records from this phase will determine who moves on to the Knockout Rounds. For each conference, the team with the top record from each group will advance to the Knockout Rounds. Additionally, each conference will have one wild card team advance, which is the team with the next best record, regardless of which group they played in. This will bring four teams from each conference into the Knockout Rounds.

Tiebreakers

If two or more teams finish with the same record after Group Play, there are multiple tiebreakers in place that will be employed to break said tie(s) and determine the winner of the group. They will be applied in the following order as necessary:

• Head-to-head record in Group Play
• Point differential in Group Play (excluding overtime scoring)
• Total points scored in Group Play (excluding overtime scoring)
• Record from 2023-24 season
• Random drawing

If there are additional ties among those vying for a wild card spot, these same tiebreakers (except head-to-head record) will be used to determine the wild card team(s) as well.

Knockout Rounds

With the field of eight teams for the Knockout Rounds set, they will battle it out in a single-elimination tournament bracket until we have a winner. Much like the NBA Playoffs, the two conferences will sit on opposite sides of the bracket until the Championship game, where the winner from the East side of the bracket will meet the winner from the West side of the bracket.

The Quarterfinals will be played on Dec. 10-11, with games hosted by the teams with the best Group Play records (ties broken again as described above).

Once the Semifinals combatants are set, they'll face off at a neutral site in Las Vegas on Dec. 14, with the Championship game being played on Dec. 17. The Championship game (and any statistics) will not count count toward a team's regular-season record for the season.

While the Knockout Rounds are in progress, the rest of the league will continue to play regular-season games on days when the NBA Cup games are not occurring.

Prizes

Making it to the Knockout Rounds of the NBA Cup will earn players a cash prize, providing even more motivation to keep the competitive juices flowing. Cash is earned in increasing amounts based on where they finish in the Knockout Rounds.

• Quarterfinal finisher: $51,497 per player
• Semifinal finisher: $102,994 per player
• Championship runner-up: $205,988 per player
• NBA Cup Champions: $514,970 per player

The winners will also be logged in the NBA record books as NBA Cup Champions and, of course, will receive a sweet trophy.

The winning team may even be graced with a championship banner to be displayed in their arena.

There will also be awards selection by a media panel, who will select the Most Valuable Player of the tournament and the All-Tournament Team.

With its unique stakes, special courts and a cash prize on the line, the NBA Cup offers fresh midseason action to break up the grind and celebrate the league and its stars. So grab your calendar and mark those NBA Cup nights, you don't want to miss a minute of the action.