One day before the full NBA regular season will be released, the Orlando Magic found out the dates and locations of their NBA Cup group play games on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
Orlando\u2019s NBA Cup games begin on Oct. 30 at the Toronto Raptors at 7:30 p.m. Two weeks later, on Friday the 13th no less (Nov. 13), the Magic host the Milwaukee Bucks at 7 p.m. The last two group play games are on Nov. 20 at the Brooklyn Nets at 7:30 p.m. and Nov. 24 at the Kia Center against the Detroit Pistons at 7 p.m.<\/p>\n
The in-season tournament is in its fourth year, after the Lakers won the inaugural NBA Cup in 2023, followed by the Bucks in 2024 and the NBA champion Knicks last year. Orlando advanced to the NBA Cup semifinals last year, where they lost to the Knicks.<\/a><\/p>\n The NBA Cup format consists of group play and knockout rounds, and concludes with the championship game on Dec. 11 at historic Hinkle Fieldhouse on the campus of Butler University in Indianapolis.<\/p>\n All 30 teams were drawn into groups of five randomly within each conference based on win-loss records from last season. The Magic avoid most of the projected Eastern Conference contenders in their group, with the Pistons being the most intriguing matchup.<\/p>\n Orlando was up 3-1 in the first-round playoff series against No. 1 seed Detroit before the Pistons won the series in seven games. That ended the Magic\u2019s 2025-26 season and essentially ended head coach Jamahl Mosley\u2019s stint with with Magic. He was fired days later <\/a>after failing to advance out of the first round of the playoffs for a third consecutive year. The Magic then hired Sean Sweeney as head coach.\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n Sweeney was probably pleased the Magic avoided Group B in the East, which consists of New York, Philadelphia with newly acquired LeBron James, Cleveland, Indiana and Miami, with newly acquired Giannis Antetokounmpo. Group C features Boston, Chicago, Atlanta, Charlotte and Washington.<\/p>\n The NBA Cup quarterfinals (Dec. 4-5) and semifinals (Dec. 8 and\/or 9) will be played in team markets this year.<\/p>\n Six group winners and one wild-card team from each conference will advance to the single-elimination knockout rounds. Teams in the knockout rounds will compete for a prize pool and the NBA Cup trophy.<\/p>\n All 67 games of the in-season tournament will count toward the regular-season standings, except for the championship.<\/p>\n The Magic begin training camp Sept. 29 at the AdventHealth Training Center.<\/p>\n Choosing Hinkle Fieldhouse for the final \u201creflects the NBA\u2019s multiyear vision to bring the championship to distinctive stages that honor the sport\u2019s history while connecting with audiences around the world,\u201d according to the league.<\/p>\n It was also the arena used in the final scenes of movie \u201cHoosiers\u201d that told the story of small Milan High School winning the Indiana state title \u2014 a game that was played at Hinkle in 1954.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One day before the full NBA regular season will be released, the Orlando Magic found out the dates…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":811323,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[2558,355,11950,5262,219873,99],"class_list":["post-811322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-latest-headlines","tag-nba","tag-orlando-magic","tag-social","tag-social-sports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=811322"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/811322\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/811323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=811322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=811322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=811322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}