If the Blazers beat the Spurs, Portland will advance to the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup out of Group C, which many pundits labeled the “Group of Death.”<\/p>\n
PORTLAND, Ore. \u2014 The Portland Trail Blazers<\/a> have had a challenging start to the season, with six rotation players, including two starters, missing games due to injuries.<\/p>\n But Blazers fans have something fun to watch Wednesday night: an early season game with stakes, thanks to Portland’s strong performance so far in NBA Cup play.<\/p>\n If the Blazers beat the San Antonio Spurs \u2014 another injury-ravaged team \u2014 Portland will advance to the knockout stage out of Group C, which many pundits labeled the “Group of Death.”<\/a> The group includes the Denver Nuggets, Golden State Warriors, Houston Rockets, Spurs and Blazers.<\/p>\n
Portland Trail Blazers (8-10) vs. San Antonio Spurs (11-5)<\/p>\n Most analysts didn’t give Portland much of a chance of advancing out of group play against that lineup of Western Conference contenders. Before NBA Cup play began, Bill Simmons of The Athletic quipped<\/a>, “I\u2019m gonna predict Portland doesn’t advance.”<\/p>\n It wasn’t an unreasonable take. The Nuggets, Rockets and Warriors all won between 48 and 52 games last season, and the Spurs \u2014 with superstar Victor Wembanyama \u2014 are viewed as a team on the verge of contention. The Blazers won 36 games last season, and Las Vegas projected them to fall short of that mark this year.<\/p>\n But Portland has beaten the Nuggets\u00a0<\/a>and Warriors\u00a0<\/a>in NBA Cup play and leads Group C with a 2-1 record. If the Blazers beat the Spurs, who will be without Wembanyama (calf strain) and reigning Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle (hip flexor strain), they’re guaranteed to win the group thanks to head-to-head tiebreakers.<\/p>\n What does that mean for the Blazers?<\/p>\n They would advance to the knockout rounds with seven other teams: the winners of all six groups and two wild-card teams \u2014 one from each conference with the best group-play record among teams that finished second. The knockout rounds are single-elimination games on Dec. 9 and 10, followed by the semifinals and championship games on Dec. 13 and 16.<\/p>\n The semifinals and championship are played in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n All NBA Cup games count toward the regular-season standings except for the championship game.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If the Blazers beat the Spurs, Portland will advance to the knockout rounds of the NBA Cup out…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":308211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-308210","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\/308210","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=308210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/308210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/308211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=308210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=308210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=308210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nWednesday’s game <\/p>\n