understand the new tournament for the 2023-2024 season

This Tuesday, 24th, the NBA will kick off for the 2023-2024 season. Therefore, all the spotlight is focused on the most powerful franchises in world basketball. However, the league will have an important change in its calendar, with the insertion of an interseason tournament: the NBA Cupcreated by the commissioner Adam Silver.

In fact, the debut of the “Cup” is close, as the tournament will be played in November 2023. Therefore, at the beginning of the month, the teams will be divided into six groups of five franchises, three brackets for each conference. For this scheme to be possible, the set of teams will be defined based on last season’s performance.

This way, with the groups defined, each franchise will have four games, two at home and two away from home. Initially, the expectation is that the clashes in this first phase of the NBA Cup will be played on Tuesdays and Fridays in November. After these first meetings, the first placed teams in each group advance to the knockout stages.

In addition to the top teams in each group, the best team in each conference, which was not the leader in their bracket, will also advance to the quarterfinals. Thus, the knockout phase will feature eight franchises, while the other 22 continue with games added to their schedules, in order to fulfill the 82 matches until the end of the regular season.

In the knockout stage, the quarter-final games will be played in the gymnasiums of the classified franchises, while the T-Mobile Arena, in Las Vegas, hosts the semifinal clashes. At the end of the tournament, the NBA Cup champion athletes win a prize valued at US$500,000, while the runners-up receive US$200,000.