How Does the NBA Cup Work? I Went Through All 201 Cup Games

So how does the NBA Cup work? It's the league's in-season tournament. All 30 teams are drawn into six groups of five, three in each conference. Every team plays four group games, one against each team in its group. The six group winners and one wild card from each conference, eight teams in all, move on to a single-elimination bracket: quarterfinals, semifinals and a championship game. Every Cup game counts in the regular-season standings except the final.

The 2026 Cup opened on Friday, Oct. 30, 2026, and the championship is Friday, Dec. 11, 2026, at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, per NBA.com.

That's the short version. The details are where people get lost: the wild card, the point-differential tiebreaker, and why the final doesn't show up in anybody's record. So I went through every Cup game from the first three tournaments, the 2023, 2024 and 2025 editions. That's 180 group games and 21 knockout games, 201 in all, plus the 10 games from the first Cup Night on Oct. 30. Here's how the whole thing works, and what those games show about how teams actually get through.

What Is the NBA Cup? The Emirates NBA Cup Explained

The NBA Cup is a second trophy the league plays for inside its regular season. It started in the 2023-24 season as the NBA In-Season Tournament, and it's now called the Emirates NBA Cup. If you're asking what is the NBA Cup in one line: a 30-team tournament played inside the regular season, with its own trophy and prize money.

There are two stages:

• Group Play. Each team plays four games on "Cup Nights," two at home and two on the road. In 2026, Cup Nights are every Friday from Oct. 30 through Nov. 27, plus Tuesday, Nov. 24 and Wednesday, Nov. 25. The only NBA games played on a Cup Night are Cup games.

• The Knockout Rounds. Eight teams play single-elimination games: quarterfinals, semifinals and the championship.

It's 67 games in total: 60 in group play and seven in the knockout rounds.

My dad and I both root for the Lakers, and the Lakers won the first one, beating the Indiana Pacers 123-109 in the championship on Dec. 9, 2023, and LeBron James was named MVP, per NBA.com.

How Does the NBA Cup Work, Step by Step?

Step 1: The group draw

The groups are drawn at random, but not completely at random. Before the draw, the 15 teams in each conference are split into five "pots" of three based on their record from the previous regular season. Each group gets one team from each pot, so every group has one of the conference's three best teams and one of its three worst.

For 2026, the pots used 2025-26 records, and the groups were revealed on Tuesday, June 30, 2026, per NBA.com:

Your group record is the only record that matters for the Cup. A team can be 10-2 overall in November and still miss the knockout rounds if it went 2-2 in its four Cup games.

Step 2: Cup Nights and getting out of a group

In theory, a 2-2 team could advance. It's never happened. Of the 24 teams that reached the quarterfinals from 2023 through 2025, 10 went 4-0 in group play and the other 14 went 3-1. I got the same split from the game results, and FOX Sports reported it too.

If your team loses one group game, it's in trouble. If it loses two, it's done.

Step 3: Six group winners plus two wild cards

Two of the eight knockout spots go to wild cards, one per conference. The wild card is the team with the best group-play record among the three teams in its conference that finished second in their groups.

Ties inside each group are broken first. Then the three second-place teams are compared. If they're tied on record, the league uses the same tiebreakers it uses inside a group, minus head-to-head, since they're from different groups and didn't play each other in group play.

This is where point differential matters most. In five of the six wild-card races so far, the second-place teams were tied on record and the spot came down to point differential:

Point differentials are from group games only, with overtime taken out (more on that below).

So a 3-1 team that finishes second has a real shot at the wild card, but it usually needs to have won its games by a lot. In the Cup, the margin can matter almost as much as the win.

NBA Cup Rules: Tiebreakers, Overtime and the Wild Card

Group tiebreakers in order

If two or more teams in a group finish with the same record, the NBA breaks the tie in this order, per NBA.com:

Overtime doesn't count

The overtime rule trips people up. Overtime doesn't count toward point differential or total points. If a group game goes to overtime, both teams get a point differential of 0 for that game, and points scored in overtime are left out of the points total. There were eight overtime games in group play over the first three Cups.

Wild card tiebreakers

The wild card uses the same list minus head-to-head, since the second-place teams come from different groups.

3-way ties

NBA.com says the same tiebreakers apply when two or more teams are tied. That's all the league spells out, so that's all I'll say about the procedure.

It has happened once. In 2023, the Boston Celtics, Orlando Magic and Brooklyn Nets all went 3-1 in their group, and each went 1-1 against the other two. Boston won the group, and it also had the best point differential of the three:

Orlando and Brooklyn didn't get the wild card either. The Knicks had the East's best record among second-place teams, at 3-1 and +42.

Across the first three Cups, 5 of the 18 group winners needed a tiebreaker. Four were two-team ties settled by head-to-head: Atlanta over Boston, Golden State over Dallas and Oklahoma City over Phoenix in 2024, and the Knicks over Miami in 2025. The other was that 2023 three-way tie.

Do NBA Cup Games Count? Standings and Stats

Yes, all of them except the championship. Group games, quarterfinals and semifinals all count in the regular-season standings and in player and team stats. The final doesn't count toward anyone's record or stats, per NBA.com.

Here's the scheduling trick that makes it work. Every team starts the season with 80 games on its schedule, and the four group games are part of those 80. The last two games get filled in during December based on how the Cup goes:

For 2026, the 22 non-qualifiers play their two extra games on Dec. 6-7 and Dec. 9-10, and the four quarterfinal losers play each other on Dec. 7, 9 or 10. Everyone ends up at 82. I covered the full schedule math in how many games are in an NBA season.

Because group games count, a Cup game is also a normal conference game for playoff seeding and tiebreakers. A Cup win is a regular-season win.

How the NBA Cup Knockout Rounds and Final Work

The knockout rounds are single elimination. Lose once and you're out. East teams play East teams and West teams play West teams until the final, which is one team from each conference.

Seeding is by group-play record. In each conference, the two teams with the best group-play records host the quarterfinals, and the team with the best record hosts the wild card. In practice, that's always been the two best group winners. All knockout games stream on Prime, per NBA.com.

Two things are new in 2026. For the first three Cups, the semifinals and the final were all played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. This time the semifinals are at the higher seed's arena, and the final moved out of Las Vegas for the first time, to Hinkle Fieldhouse, the home of Butler University, per FOX Sports and NBC Sports.

What the knockout games show

Home court has mattered in the quarterfinals, and the wild card has been a dead end so far:

Every wild card has lost its quarterfinal, and every one of them was on the road against its conference's top seed. All three champions won their group. Two of them, the 2023 Lakers and the 2024 Bucks, went 7-0 through the whole thing.

A perfect group stage doesn't buy much once it's one game. Teams that went 4-0 are just 6-4 in the quarterfinals. The 2025 Lakers went 4-0 in their group and then lost at home to the Spurs 132-119, and the 2024 Rockets got past the Warriors by one point, 91-90.

NBA Cup Prize Money: What Players Get Paid

The prize pool goes to the players on the eight teams in the knockout rounds, and it grows the further a team goes. The 2026 amounts are per player on a standard contract, per the AP as reported by HoopsHype on Oct. 30. Two-way players get 50% of those amounts. The 2023 column is from the NBA's 2023 announcement:

That's about 21% more at every level than in 2023. NBC Sports points out that the winner's share is about one game check for a star like Giannis Antetokounmpo or Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, but a meaningful bump for players on minimum salaries. If you want to know how players get paid in the first place, here's how NBA salaries actually work.

There's also hardware. A media panel picks a Cup MVP and an All-Tournament Team based on group play and the knockout rounds.

NBA Cup Key Dates

Dates are from NBA.com's key dates.

NBA Cup Champions

Scores and MVPs are from NBA.com and the box scores (2023, 2024, 2025).

The Cup has been a decent preview of June. The Pacers lost the first Cup final and reached the NBA Finals in the 2024-25 season. The Thunder lost the 2024 Cup final and won the 2025 NBA title. And the Knicks beat the Spurs in the 2025 Cup final, then beat them again in the 2026 NBA Finals, the first team to win the Cup and the NBA championship in the same season, per NBA.com. If you're curious about the Spurs' side of that, I wrote about why Victor Wembanyama will be great.

How the 2026 Cup Started: Results From Oct. 30

Ten Cup games were played on the first Cup Night, Friday, Oct. 30, 2026. The headline game was the 76ers' 98-93 win over the Knicks, the headline game of the Prime Video opening doubleheader. It wasn't the first tip, though. Three Cup games started earlier that night. With five teams in a group, at least one team sits out every Cup Night, and West Groups B and C played only one game each. Scores are from the Basketball-Reference box scores and match ESPN's.

None went to overtime, so every margin counts toward point differential. The defending Cup and NBA champion Knicks lost their first Cup game, and so did the Lakers, by 17 at Golden State. Five of the six wild cards so far came down to point differential, so a 17-point loss is a hole, not just a loss. The Lakers have three group games left to climb out of it.

Where the Cup stands now (as of Nov. 2)

• One of seven Cup Nights is done: 10 group games on Oct. 30, none in overtime.

• The defending champion Knicks and the Lakers both started 0-1 in group play.

• Next Cup Night: Friday, Nov. 6. Group play ends Nov. 27, quarterfinals are Dec. 4-5 and the final is Dec. 11 in Indianapolis.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the NBA Cup?

The NBA Cup, officially the Emirates NBA Cup, is the NBA's in-season tournament. All 30 teams play four group games, and eight advance to a single-elimination bracket. It started in the 2023-24 season as the In-Season Tournament.

Do NBA Cup games count in the standings?

Yes, every Cup game counts except the championship. Group games, quarterfinals and semifinals are regular-season games.

How does the NBA Cup wild card work?

In each conference, the second-place team with the best group-play record gets the wild card. Ties are broken by point differential, then total points, then prior-season record. Five of the first six wild cards were decided on point differential.

How does the NBA Cup point differential tiebreaker work?

If head-to-head doesn't break a tie, the team with the best point differential in its four group games wins it. Overtime doesn't count: a group game that goes to overtime counts as a 0 point differential for both teams.

How much money do NBA Cup winners get?

Each player on a standard contract on the winning team gets $604,985, per the AP via HoopsHype. Runners-up get $241,994, semifinal losers $120,997 and quarterfinal losers $60,499. Two-way players get half.

Who won the NBA Cup last year?

The New York Knicks won the 2025 NBA Cup, beating the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 in the final on Dec. 16, 2025. Jalen Brunson was MVP.

When and where is the NBA Cup final?

The 2026 NBA Cup championship is Friday, Dec. 11, 2026, at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis. It's the first Cup final played outside Las Vegas.

The Bottom Line

The NBA Cup is four group games, an eight-team bracket and a final that doesn't count in the standings. The rule to remember is the tiebreaker: head-to-head first, then point differential with overtime taken out. Over the first three Cups, it decided five of the six wild-card spots, and every team that got out of its group was 3-1 or better.

If you're watching a Cup game on a Friday in November, watch the margin, not just the score. And if you're wondering how long you'll be on the couch, here's how long an NBA game actually lasts.

How I got the numbers: group and knockout results for the 2023, 2024 and 2025 Cups and the Oct. 30, 2026 games come from ESPN's public NBA scoreboard data, which tags every Cup game. I rebuilt each group from the games played, then applied the NBA's tiebreakers, with overtime margins set to 0. My standings produced the same 24 quarterfinalists the NBA actually used.

Sources:

• NBA.com: Emirates NBA Cup 101, rules, format and how it works

• NBA.com: Emirates NBA Cup 2026 groups announced (key dates and Cup history)

• NBA.com: NBA announces In-Season Tournament information (2023 prize pool)

• FOX Sports (AP): NBA Cup opens Friday with all 30 teams in the mix

• HoopsHype via Yahoo Sports (Oct. 30): NBA Cup prize money

• NBA.com: 76ers vs. Knicks, Oct. 30

• NBC Sports: NBA Cup 2026, how does it work, schedule and format

• Sports Illustrated: NBA Cup format, rules and tiebreakers explained

• Basketball-Reference: NBA games played on Oct. 30, 2026