The 2024-2025 Emirates NBA Cup is set to begin Tuesday, November 12th. The 2023-2024 was the first ever Emirates NBA Cup and it can still be a little confusing with how new it is. Let’s go through what the Emirates NBA Cup is, how it works, and all the little quirks in between.
What is the Emirates NBA Cup?
The Emirates NBA Cup is an in-season tournament that is similar to the UEFA Champions League over in Europe. The Champions League consists of Europe’s top soccer clubs across different leagues (Premier, La Liga, Bundesliga, etc.) that play against each other and end up in a tournament to see who wins the Champions Cup. The main difference is that all of the teams in the NBA play in the Emirates NBA Cup as opposed to select teams in the Champions League.
How Does the Emirates NBA Cup Work?
The entire NBA, 30 teams, are split into six groups of five teams. Three groups for the Western Conference and three groups for the Eastern Conference. The groups are picked by dividing groups into five different pots of teams. Pot 1 are the teams that finished 1-3 in their conference the previous year, Pot 2 are for 4-6, Pot 3 is 7-9, Pot 4 is 10-12, and finally Pot 5 is 13-15. Each group is then given one team from each pot and boom, you have your groups.
Each team in each group will play each other once. This is the Pool Play portion of the tournament. All of the NBA Emirates Cup games will be played on Tuesdays and Fridays. The best team from each group and one wildcard from each conference will advance to the knockout stages. From here on out, it is single elimination. You win, you advance. You loose, better luck next year. The final team from the Western Conference and the final team from the Eastern Conference will play each other in the Emirates NBA Cup Finals in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Little Quirks In-Between
The dates for the start of each section of the Emirates Cup is:
- Pool Play starts November 12th
- Knockout Stage on December 10th and December 11th
- Semi-Finals on December 14th
- Emirates Cup Finals on December 17th.
While Emirates Cup games will only be played on Tuesdays and Fridays, other regular season games will still be played on the other days of the week that do not count towards the Cup standings. This was done to avoid two major concerns which was dragging the season out longer and adding on more games.
All of the Cup games count towards their regular season record except for the Emirates Cup Final. The teams that do not make the Knockout Stage of the Cup will play two regular season games during the Knockout Stage. The four teams that loose in the Quarter-Finals will then play a regular season game against each other on December 12th, 13th, 15th, or 16th. The teams that make the Cup Semi-Finals will not need to schedule another game. This ensures that all teams still play 82 games in the season except for the two teams that make the Emirates Cup Finals. They will play 83 games, which is why the Cup Finals do not count against regular season records.
Wildcard teams are one team from each conference that had the best Pool Play record, but finished second in their group. However, if there is a tie these are the tie breakers (in sequential order):
- Head-to-Head Record in Group Play,
- Point Differential in Group Play,
- Total Points Scored in Group Play,
- Record from the previous year (2023-2024); and
- Random Drawing
It is important to note that overtime scoring will NOT count towards a teams point differential or total points scored during Cup play.
Not only are teams motivated by bragging rights and the trophy, but each player is also compensated depending on their teams finish in the Emirates Cup. This was shown, last year, as a major motivating factor for players, especially superstar players, wanting to get their lower salary players a good pay day. Here are the financial awards for the Emirates Cup:
- Quarter-Final Teams earn $50,000 per player
- Semi-Final Teams earn $100,000 per player
- Runner-Up Team earn $200,000 per player
- Emirates Cup Champions earn #500,000 per player
2023-2024 Emirates NBA Cup Results
2023-2204 Emirates NBA Cup Champions: Los Angeles Lakers
2023-2024 Emirates NBA Cup Finals MVP: LeBron James
2023-2024 Emirates NBA Cup All-Tournament Team:
- Tyrese Haliburton
- Giannis Antetokounmpo
- Kevin Durant
- LeBron James
- Anthony Davis
Be sure to check in here every week for an Emirates Cup Recap of the week!
2024-2025 Emirates NBA Cup Pool Play begins on Tuesday, November 12th with the New York Knicks playing the Philadelphia 76ers at 6:30 pm and the Dallas Mavericks playing the Golden State Warriors at 9:00 pm on TNT.
Main Image: Candice Ward-Imagn Images
