The Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder look like they are going to have the most competitive race to win one of the NBA Cup groups. <\/p>\n
Minnesota and OKC won their group-stage openers by a combined 71 points on Friday night. <\/p>\n
Minnesota is ahead in West Group A on point differential, but it faces a tough task to advance as group winner against the reigning NBA champion and NBA Cup runner-up.<\/p>\n
The reigning NBA Cup champion, the Milwaukee Bucks, started strong as well on Friday with a 16-point win over the Chicago Bulls.<\/p>\n
Updated NBA Cup Standings<\/p>\n
Toronto (2-0; +23 point differential)Cleveland (1-1; +23)Atlanta (1-1; +8)Indiana (0-1; -20)Washington (0-1; -34)Detroit (1-0; +18)Orlando (1-0; +13)Boston (1-1; -12)Philadelphia (0-1; -1)Brooklyn (0-1; -18)Miami (1-0; +18)Milwaukee (1-0; +16)Chicago (1-1; -6)New York (0-1; -10)Charlotte (0-1; -18)Minnesota (1-0; +40)Oklahoma City (1-0; +31)Phoenix (1-0; +22)Sacramento (0-1; -31)Utah (0-1; -40)Los Angeles Lakers (1-0; +5)Los Angeles Clippers (1-0; +2)Memphis (1-1; +9)New Orleans (0-1; -2)Dallas (0-1; -14)San Antonio (1-0; +11)Portland (1-0; +2)Denver (1-1; +23)Houston (0-1; -11)Golden State (0-1; -25)<\/p>\n
The November 26 clash between Minnesota and Oklahoma City has the potential to be the best game of the group stage. <\/p>\n
Minnesota blew out the Utah Jazz by 40 points on Friday night behind 37 points from Anthony Edwards, while OKC took down the Sacramento Kings by 31 points. <\/p>\n
Minnesota and OKC already created a gap between themselves and the rest of West Group A. The Phoenix Suns are 1-0 with a +22 point differential, but they are expected to lose to both the Wolves and Thunder in group play. <\/p>\n
The November 26 game in Oklahoma City will likely determine the West Group A winner and have an affect on the second-place standings. The best second-place team in each conference advances to the quarterfinals alongside the three group winners. <\/p>\n
At the moment, OKC leads the second-place standings and has a +29 edge in point differential over the Los Angeles Clippers and Portland Trail Blazers. <\/p>\n
The San Antonio Spurs should now be the West Group C favorite after beating the Houston Rockets on Friday. The Los Angeles Lakers are expected to win West Group B.<\/p>\n
Over in the East, the Bucks could face competition from the Miami Heat to win East Group C.<\/p>\n
Milwaukee is 13-1 in NBA Cup\/In-Season tournament games. With the Bulls already at 1-1 and the New York Knicks at 0-1, the Bucks’ biggest threat right now is the Heat. <\/p>\n
The Bucks face the Heat and Knicks in consecutive games on November 26 and 28 in group play. <\/p>\n
The Toronto Raptors are the surprise leader of East Group A at 2-0 after wins over the Cleveland Cavaliers and Atlanta Hawks. They just have to beat the Indiana Pacers and Washington Wizards now to advance. <\/p>\n
East Group B is currently led by the Detroit Pistons, but the Orlando Magic, Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers will all try to have a say in winning that group.<\/p>\n
If anything, the race for the best second-place spot will be heated in the East because of the early results. <\/p>\n
East Group Winners: Toronto, Detroit, Milwaukee<\/p>\n
West Group Winners: Oklahoma City, Los Angeles Lakers, San Antonio<\/p>\n
Best Second-Place Teams: Orlando, Minnesota<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Minnesota Timberwolves and Oklahoma City Thunder look like they are going to have the most competitive race…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":271200,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-271199","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nba","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271199","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=271199"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/271199\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/271200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=271199"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=271199"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=271199"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}