{"id":771334,"date":"2026-07-01T04:14:14","date_gmt":"2026-07-01T04:14:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/771334\/"},"modified":"2026-07-01T04:14:14","modified_gmt":"2026-07-01T04:14:14","slug":"nba-cup-2026-groups-dates-format-revealed-for-in-season-tournament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/771334\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA Cup 2026 Groups, Dates, Format Revealed for In-Season Tournament"},"content":{"rendered":"

The NBA season is still months away, but the stage is already set for the Emirates NBA Cup. <\/p>\n

The league announced the groups, dates and formats for the in-season tournament on Tuesday. <\/p>\n

The NBA Cup has added an exciting element to the regular season over the last three years. The Los Angeles Lakers won the inaugural in-season tournament in 2023, while the Milwaukee Bucks and New York Knicks won in 2024 and 2025, respectively.<\/p>\n

An interesting twist in this year’s in-season tournament is the fact that the championship game will take place at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, where Butler basketball plays.<\/p>\n

Last December, NBA commissioner Adam Silver\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0the final game could start taking place at “unique locations” such as “storied college arenas.” Hinkle Fieldhouse would certainly qualify as a storied arena.<\/p>\n

In the past, the NBA Cup semifinal and championship games have been played in Las Vegas. The league’s contract with T-Mobile Arena on the Las Vegas Strip\u00a0ended<\/a>\u00a0after last season.<\/p>\n

Moving games to college campuses provides a change of scenery from what NBA players are used to while giving schools the chance to bring some excitement to their campuses and cities.<\/p>\n

The semifinal games won’t take place at Hinkle Fieldhouse, however, as they’ll instead be played at NBA teams’ arenas.<\/p>\n

As a refresher, NBA Cup games count towards a team’s record like a regular-season game would, though teams who advance to the championship play one additional game on top of the 82 regular-season games.<\/p>\n

Last season, players on the Knicks won $530,933 each for winning the championship game. Players on the Spurs earned $212,373 each for finishing as the runner-up, while those who lost in the semifinal got $106,187 each, and players lost made the quarterfinal received $53,093 each.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA season is still months away, but the stage is already set for the Emirates NBA Cup.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":771335,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[64,63,590,85],"class_list":["post-771334","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771334","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=771334"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/771334\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/771335"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=771334"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=771334"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=771334"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}