NBA Cup Explained: Prize Money, Format and Tiebreakers

Picture a Friday night in November. Your team is up 19 with 30 seconds left, the starters are on the bench, and a backup guard pulls up for a corner three anyway. The other bench is furious. The broadcast crew calls it bad manners. In the NBA Cup, though, that shot can be the difference between a quiet December and a check worth a third of a player's salary.

Most fans treat the NBA Cup as a gimmick with a painted court. That view misses how much money sits on the table, and how the rules quietly push teams to play the last minute of a blowout like it matters. This guide walks through the format, the tiebreakers, the prize money in real salary terms, and how you can follow every round.

How the NBA Cup Works This Season

The tournament runs from October 30 to December 11. All 30 teams sit in six groups of five, three in each conference, drawn by the previous season's records. Each team plays the other four in its group once, with two games at home and two on the road.

Group play happens on "Cup Nights": every Friday from October 30 through November 27, plus extra Cup Nights on November 24 and 25 during Thanksgiving week. That adds up to 60 group games.

The groups

• East A: Pistons, Raptors, Magic, Bucks, Nets
• East B: Knicks, Cavaliers, 76ers, Heat, Pacers
• East C: Celtics, Hawks, Hornets, Bulls, Wizards
• West A: Nuggets, Rockets, Suns, Mavericks, Jazz
• West B: Thunder, Timberwolves, Clippers, Pelicans, Grizzlies
• West C: Spurs, Lakers, Trail Blazers, Warriors, Kings

Knockout rounds and the final

Eight teams advance: the six group winners plus one wild card per conference. The wild card is the second-place team with the best group record in its conference. From there it is single elimination.

• Quarterfinals, December 4 and 5: hosted by the two best group teams in each conference, with the top seed hosting the wild card.
• Semifinals, December 8 and/or 9: played at the higher seed's home arena.
• Championship, December 11: Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, the only neutral-site game.

The NBA's official Cup 101 guide confirms one detail many fans miss: group games, quarterfinals and semifinals all count in the regular-season standings. The championship game does not count toward records or stats. For the two finalists it is effectively an 83rd game.

What Changed From Last Season

The first three finals were all played in Las Vegas. This season the league moved the final to Hinkle Fieldhouse, Butler University's historic gym, and handed the semifinals to the higher seed's home crowd instead of a neutral floor.

The schedule trick behind the Cup still applies. Teams start with 80 games booked, and the last two get filled in after group play:

• The 22 teams that miss the knockout rounds play two extra games against other eliminated teams, one home and one away.
• The four quarterfinal losers in each conference play each other.
• Semifinalists play their games inside the tournament itself.

Everyone still ends at 82 games that count. That fixed total is why the final sits outside the standings.

Past NBA Cup Winners

Three champions so far, and three very different paths:

• 2023: Los Angeles Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers 123-109. LeBron James was MVP.
• 2024: Milwaukee Bucks beat the Oklahoma City Thunder 97-81. Giannis Antetokounmpo was MVP.
• 2025: New York Knicks beat the San Antonio Spurs 124-113 after a fourth-quarter rally. Jalen Brunson was MVP, taking 19 of 20 media votes.

The Knicks win was the franchise's first trophy of any kind since the 1973 NBA title. That tells you something. For fans of a team that has gone decades without a banner, the Cup stopped being a novelty fast.

NBA Cup Prize Money, Round by Round

The prize pool goes only to players on the eight knockout teams, and it grows the further a team goes. According to Hoops Rumors, last season's per-player amounts were:

• Champions: $530,933
• Runners-up: $212,373
• Losing semifinalists: $106,187
• Losing quarterfinalists: $53,093

Those figures are not fixed. The collective bargaining agreement ties them to basketball-related income, the league's revenue measure, which grew about 3.1% the year before. The first tournament paid an even $500,000 to each champion, and the number has crept up every year since. This season's official amounts had not been published when we wrote this, so expect a figure slightly above last year's.

Players on two-way contracts get a half share. On last season's champion, that came to $265,467 each.

Why the Prize Matters More Than It Looks

Half a million dollars sounds like pocket change in a league of nine-figure deals. It is, for a few dozen players. For everyone near the bottom of the pay scale, the Cup is the biggest raise available all year.

The league set this season's salary cap at $164.961 million. Bleacher Report lists the rookie minimum at $1.35 million and the two-way minimum at $678,882. A first-year max for a 10-year veteran is 35% of the cap, which works out to about $57.7 million.

Worked example: same check, three different players

Use last season's confirmed winner's share of $530,933 and this season's salary scale:

1. Rookie on the minimum ($1.35 million): $530,933 divided by $1,350,000 is 39.3% of a full year's pay. Spread across 82 games, that rookie earns about $16,460 a game, so the bonus equals roughly 32 games of salary for winning three knockout games.
2. Two-way player ($678,882 minimum): the half share of $265,467 is 39.1% of salary. Almost the same jump as the rookie.
3. Star on a 35% max ($57.7 million): $530,933 is 0.92% of salary. That star earns about $704,000 per regular-season game, so the whole Cup bonus is worth less than one night of work.

Run the same math on a losing quarterfinal team and the rookie still pockets $53,093, about 3.9% of salary, for one extra win in group play. Prize money also sits outside team payroll for cap and tax purposes, so the front office pays nothing extra against its cap sheet.

Now picture who decides the last two minutes of a blowout: the bench. Those are the players for whom 39% is real money. If you have read our breakdown of how a salary cap shapes a team's spending, the pattern will look familiar. Fixed pay scales make one-off bonuses matter most to the cheapest contracts.

How Tiebreakers Change Late-Game Behaviour

With only four games each, ties in the group table are common. The official order is:

1. Head-to-head record in group play
2. Point differential in group play
3. Total points scored in group play
4. Previous season's regular-season record
5. Random drawing

Head-to-head settles most two-team ties, because those teams played each other once. It breaks down in a three-way tie where everyone beat someone. It also disappears entirely in the wild-card race, since the second-place teams come from different groups and never met. In both cases point differential decides who advances.

Why a garbage-time three counts

Say two second-place teams finish 3-1. One is +21 across four games, the other +19. A single meaningless three in a November blowout flips who gets the wild card. That is why coaches now leave scorers in longer and call fouls they would usually skip.

The Associated Press documented exactly this last season. Myles Turner hit a corner three for Milwaukee with about six seconds left to push a decided game to a 17-point margin. Knicks coach Mike Brown called running up the score in the Cup "natural."

The overtime quirk

One rule cuts the other way. Any group game that goes to overtime counts as zero point differential for both teams, and overtime points do not count toward total points. A team that wins by 12 in overtime gets the win but no margin. So a trailing team tied late in regulation has a reason to play for the win in regulation rather than coast into extra time, and a team that needs margin gets nothing from a five-minute session.

How to Watch and Follow the NBA Cup

National group games are split across Prime Video, NBC and Peacock, and ESPN. The Thanksgiving week Cup Nights were the clearest split: NBC carried games on November 24 and ESPN on November 25, with Prime handling many of the Friday slates. Other group games air on your team's local broadcast.

The knockout rounds are simpler. Every quarterfinal, semifinal and the championship streams on Prime Video. If your team makes it, you need Prime for the rest of the run. Our guide to what it now costs to watch your team breaks down how those subscriptions stack up across a full season.

A few ways to track the race without watching every game:

• Watch the point differential column, not just wins. A 3-1 team at +5 is in more danger than it looks.
• Check the wild-card table on the final Friday. Second-place teams from three different groups are often separated by a handful of points.
• Note who rests stars on Cup Nights. A team that sits its best player in a group game is telling you how much it values the trophy.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do NBA Cup games count in the standings?

Yes, mostly. All four group games plus the quarterfinals and semifinals count toward the 82-game regular season. Only the championship game on December 11 is excluded from records and stats.

How much money do NBA Cup winners get?

Each player on last season's champion received $530,933, with $212,373 for runners-up, $106,187 for losing semifinalists and $53,093 for losing quarterfinalists. The amounts rise each year with basketball-related income, and two-way players receive a half share.

Where is the NBA Cup final this year?

The championship is at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on December 11. It is the first final played outside Las Vegas, and the semifinals now take place at the higher seed's home arena.

How do NBA Cup tiebreakers work?

Teams tied on group record are separated by head-to-head result, then point differential, then total points, then the previous season's record, then a random draw. Overtime games count as zero point differential, and the wild-card race skips head-to-head.

Who has won the NBA Cup?

The Lakers won the first edition in 2023, the Bucks won in 2024 and the Knicks won in 2025 by beating the Spurs 124-113.

The Bottom Line

The NBA Cup looks like a side event, but its rules reach into the regular season. Six of a finalist's seven Cup games count in the standings, a few points of margin can decide who advances, and the payout means the most to the players paid the least. A rookie who wins it adds close to 40% to a year's salary in three games.

So when a bench player hoists a three in a 20-point game this November, read it for what it is: a calculation. Check your team's point differential after each Cup Night, and if you like weighing odds on outcomes like these, read up on what you give up with sports prediction markets before you put money on the bracket.