Players and teams switch gears at the Emirates NBA Cup game

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Normally, some of Tuesday night's games – say Atlanta vs. Boston or Minnesota vs. Portland – could be viewed as inconsistencies and therefore lose momentum. If so, the lens through which we looked was focused on the long-term perspective of 82 games that resulted in two months of playoff survival.

However, there is a short game back in play to add some immediacy and freshness to today's eight-game schedule. This is the start of group play for the second Emirates NBA Cup tournament this season.

It is a sprint as part of the 2024-25 marathon, a pop quiz that can inform a team and its fans before the final exam. For a team unhappy with its performance early in the season, this might be the closest thing to a reset button. In short, the NBA Cup tournament is a great opportunity for players and coaches looking for quick gratification, gut control and growing up.

“I use the Indiana Pacers as an example,” Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “Young team that literally gained 'playoff experience' at the beginning of the year and then ended up in the Eastern Conference finals.

Rivers was on the broadcast side of the first NBA Cup and wasn't signed by the Bucks until well into January. Like many, he said he was skeptical of new wrinkles intended to increase interest in the regular season.

Indiana made it to Las Vegas, where the Pacers shut out Milwaukee, guard Tyrese Haliburton gave the Bucks' Damian Lillard a little “Dame Time” watch-check job, only to lose to the Lakers in the title game.

“Talk to Rick Carlisle, he said he doesn’t know if that would have happened if the tournament hadn’t happened during the season,” Rivers said. “That experience of being on stage at a big game, even though they laid an egg in that game, taught them a life lesson. You can’t teach that to a team.”

The four teams that emerge from group play and survive the knockout round will earn a trip to Las Vegas, and the winning team will receive both prestige and a $500,000 pot. However, the biggest benefit may be internal.

Being selected as one of the teams to play on Christmas Day was a highlight of the first three months of the season. Now there's actually something up for grabs that requires a change of gear soon.

NBA Cup games “feel bigger”

“I think it’s fun,” Boston guard Jrue Holiday said Sunday. “In the middle of the season we are pushing for something different. … Of course we try to win every single game. But knowing that this is another tournament and another milestone we want to achieve, go for it.”

Chris Finch, coach of the Minnesota Timberwolves, said: “What surprised me was that the players really treated every game in the tournament as if it was an elimination game, even if it was a group game.” Because the groups were so small and you plays very few group games.”

The league's 30 teams were divided by conference into six groups of five teams each. These teams will play on select Tuesdays and Fridays in the coming weeks.

Then the six group winners plus one wild-card team in each conference – determined by records and then tie-breakers – will compete in single-elimination quarterfinal games on December 10 and 11, while the other 22 continue with their regular games. The action in Vegas begins with two semifinal games on December 14th and the title game on December 17th.

Finch said: “It's also set in the context of the early season where everyone is hopeful, everyone still thinks they're really good and people are still trying to figure out who they really are. “So there's a lot going on when these games come. They definitely feel bigger than any other game in the regular season.”

Of course there is no guarantee. The Bucks, Pelicans and Lakers were all eliminated in the first round of the playoffs despite coveting their first Cup. Through a composite 3-12 data set.

Right now, however, there was a piñata dangling in front of highly competitive NBA players and coaches being handed sticks. Of course they would strike.

“The big part of it for me is when you get to a place where you go to Las Vegas,” Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan said Monday. “That’s where it really gets magnified. We’re talking about it.”

Unique focus for cup games

For a team like the Celtics, the Emirates NBA Cup is a chance to clear up something the defending champions haven't yet won. For fast-starting Cleveland, it would be a bright new stage and a taste of the future.

“It shows,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. “There is a title in the game. We have a competitive group and want to win every title available.”

For those who are not thrilled with how 2024-25 has played out so far, this is a clear opportunity to correct course. Winning group games is a necessary first step.

“That’s saying something,” admitted Rivers, whose Bucks are off to a 2-8 start. “[Our] People will take it much more seriously.

“It absolutely sparked interest in our league. … There were teams that attacked it and there were teams that just played along. I think this year more teams will attack it to win it.”

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Steve Aschburner has been writing about the NBA since 1980. You can email him here his archive here And Follow him on X.

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