What Actually Is the NBA Cup, and Why Does the Knicks’ Group Matter?

By Michael Phillips | Sports & Whatever | NBA

If you’re a casual fan who tuned back into basketball because your team just won a championship, you might have noticed something confusing on the schedule this fall: the Knicks have “NBA Cup” games mixed in with regular ones, and apparently they’re in a “Group of Death.” Here’s what that actually means, and why it’s worth paying attention to.

The quick version. The NBA Cup — officially the NBA Cup, formerly branded the In-Season Tournament — takes a chunk of regular-season games in October and November and organizes them into groups, tournament-style. Every team is sorted into one of six groups across the two conferences. You play the other teams in your group; those games count in the regular-season standings and toward the Cup, and the winner of each group advances to a knockout bracket, along with a handful of wild cards. Win the whole thing, and you get a trophy, bragging rights, and a real cash bonus for players. It’s not the Finals. But it’s not nothing, either — ask any Knicks fan who remembers New York winning it last season and still not raising a banner for it, because they went and won the actual championship a few months later.

Why “Group of Death” is the right label this year. New York landed in East Group B with Philadelphia, Indiana, Cleveland, and Miami. Two of those matchups jump off the page immediately. Cleveland is an Eastern Conference Finals rematch — the Knicks swept the Cavs on their way to the title, and now they play them again on November 25, before Thanksgiving, in a game that’s part regular season, part tournament, and part statement game. Two days later, on November 27, Miami comes to town with a roster that now includes a two-time MVP after a blockbuster trade brought Giannis Antetokounmpo to South Beach. Philadelphia, with LeBron James now in the mix, rounds out a group where every single other team has a case for being a top-four seed in the East.

Why this matters beyond bragging rights. Group play runs October 30 through November 27 — meaning New York’s toughest stretch of the entire regular season is packed into the season’s first month, before the roster has had much time to shake off the rust of a championship parade. How the Knicks handle that group says more about whether last year was real than almost any other stretch on the schedule. Group winners and the best-remaining wild card advance to the knockout rounds; miss it, and the games still count in the standings, but the tournament storyline ends there.

For a fan base still riding the high of a title, the NBA Cup group stage is the first real test of the season — and it starts almost immediately.

Michael Phillips covers the NBA for Sports & Whatever.