Sports · NBA · NBA Cup · Opening Night
The fourth Emirates NBA Cup opened with a 10-game slate headlined by Knicks at 76ers and Lakers at Warriors. Six groups, four group games each, a Dec. 11 final at Indianapolis's Hinkle Fieldhouse — and a simple question in its fourth year: has the Cup actually changed early-season basketball?
NEW YORK, October 31, 2026 — The NBA Cup opening night 2026 programme turned the season's second Friday into the tournament's showcase: group play in the fourth Emirates NBA Cup opened with a 10-game slate, headlined by a Prime Video doubleheader — Jalen Brunson and the defending champion New York Knicks visiting Tyrese Maxey's Philadelphia 76ers at 7:30 p.m. ET, then Stephen Curry's Golden State Warriors hosting Luka Dončić and the Los Angeles Lakers at 10 p.m. ET. Philadelphia took the opener 98–93. Around the league, the night carried the tournament's full visual signature: bespoke, fully-painted Cup courts for all 30 teams, and group standings that make a single loss close to fatal — by design.
The format, explained
All 30 teams were drawn into six groups of five, three per conference, seeded by last season's records. Each team plays four group games — one against every group opponent, two home and two away — on designated Cup Nights: every Friday from October 30 to November 27, plus special Cup nights on November 24–25 over Thanksgiving week. The six group winners advance to the Knockout Rounds, joined by the best second-place team in each conference as wild cards. From there it is single elimination: quarterfinals and — in a change for this year — semifinals at home sites rather than a neutral venue, with the championship game on Friday, December 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, the storied arena that replaces Las Vegas as the final's home. Every Cup game except the final counts toward the regular-season standings — 67 games in all — which is the tournament's founding trick: the stakes are added, not extra. Tiebreakers run from head-to-head record to point differential, which is why Cup Nights produce the spectacle of contenders running up scores in November.
The groups and tonight's picture
East Group A: Detroit Pistons, Toronto Raptors, Milwaukee Bucks, Orlando Magic, Brooklyn Nets. East Group B — the star-stacked group: New York Knicks, Cleveland Cavaliers, Philadelphia 76ers, Miami Heat, Indiana Pacers. East Group C: Boston Celtics, Atlanta Hawks, Charlotte Hornets, Chicago Bulls, Washington Wizards. West Group A: Denver Nuggets, Houston Rockets, Phoenix Suns, Dallas Mavericks, Utah Jazz. West Group B: Oklahoma City Thunder, Minnesota Timberwolves, Los Angeles Clippers, Memphis Grizzlies, New Orleans Pelicans. West Group C: Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, Sacramento Kings, Portland Trail Blazers, San Antonio Spurs. Opening night's storylines wrote themselves across the groups: in East C, Jayson Tatum's Celtics hosted a Bulls team led by No. 4 pick Caleb Wilson, while rookie AJ Dybantsa sought his first career win as Washington hosted Charlotte; in West A, the undefeated Rockets (5–0) met the Mavericks (3–2) in an all-Texas game with Kyrie Irving and Fred VanVleet returning after missing last season, and Denver travelled to Phoenix — a Nuggets–Suns meeting in which every possession already carried knockout arithmetic.
The money
The prize pool is paid to players and rises with advancement, indexed to salary-cap growth under the collective bargaining agreement: $53,093 per player for reaching the knockout rounds, $106,187 for semifinalists, $212,373 for the runners-up and $530,933 per player on the championship team. The first edition in 2023 paid $500,000 per winning player; the figure's climb since is the tournament's quiet proof of concept. For stars the money is a rounding error; for the two-way and end-of-bench players who fill out Cup rosters, a deep run is a mortgage — one reason locker rooms adopted the tournament faster than sceptics expected. Coaches on winning staffs share in the pool as well, aligning the whole bench behind November intensity.
Why this matters: has the Cup changed early-season basketball?
Four editions in, the evidence cuts in the tournament's favour on its own terms. The problem it was built to solve — the regular season's featureless first two months — has visibly eased: Cup Nights give Fridays a branded, standings-driven product, group games between contenders (Knicks–Sixers, Lakers–Warriors) arrive with genuine consequence in week two, and the point-differential tiebreaker has measurably changed late-game behaviour, for better and occasionally for grumbling. The honour roll argues legitimacy too: the Lakers won the first Cup in 2023, the Bucks the second, and the Knicks the third — then became the first team to win the Cup and the NBA Finals in the same season, retiring the early joke that the tournament was a consolation bracket for the unserious. The sceptics' case has narrowed but not vanished: the group stage still produces confusion (four games, two wild cards, five tiebreakers), the painted courts remain an acquired taste, and no one has yet shown the Cup moves the season's biggest needle — June. The fairest verdict at the fourth opening night: the tournament has changed November, demonstrably; it has changed basketball, modestly; and in a league whose scarcest resource is regular-season meaning, that was always the point. This month's other basketball business — a $2.2 million high-school jersey — suggests the sport's nostalgia economy needs no help; the Cup is the league building the same intensity in the present tense.
What happens next
Group play runs every Friday through November 27, with the Thanksgiving-week Cup nights on November 24–25 completing the four-game schedules. Watch point differentials as seriously as wins — they are the wild-card race — and watch East Group B, where the Knicks, Cavaliers, Sixers, Heat and Pacers cannot all advance. The knockout rounds follow in December, building to the December 11 final at Hinkle Fieldhouse, where the league will learn whether a basketball cathedral in Indianapolis gives its young tournament the one thing Las Vegas couldn't: the feeling that it has always been played there.
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Sources
- USA Today (October 30, 2026) — How the 2026 NBA Cup works: format, schedule and groups — group play from October 30 to November 27, the draw by pots from 2025–26 records, and the December 11 championship at Hinkle Fieldhouse.
- bet365 News (October 29, 2026) — 2026/27 format, schedule and prize money: all six groups listed; $53,093 per player for the knockout rounds rising to $530,933 per player for the champions.
- Deadspin (October 30, 2026) — The fourth Emirates NBA Cup's two-stage structure; all 67 games through the knockout rounds counting toward regular-season records; previous championship matchups.
- World Today Journal (October 31, 2026) — Opening night's 10-game slate and the Prime Video doubleheader — Knicks at 76ers, Lakers at Warriors — with the night's other matchups including Celtics–Bulls and Rockets–Mavericks.