The NBA announced the groups for the in-season tournament and the Knicks are in the following group:
Milwaukee, Miami, Washington and Charlotte. So it looks like the Knicks will be able to get to the Knockout stages fairly easily playing Washington and Charlotte.
Here are the rules:
The In-Season Tournament will consist of two stages: Group Play and the Knockout Rounds.
• Group Play: As revealed today on ESPN and outlined below, all 30 teams have been randomly drawn into groups of five within their conference based on win-loss records from the 2022-23 regular season. Each team will play four designated Group Play games – one game against each opponent in its group, with two games at home and two on the road – on “Tournament Nights,” which will take place every Tuesday and Friday from Nov. 3-28 (with the exception of Election Day on Tuesday, Nov. 7, when no games will be played). The only NBA games played on Tournament Nights will be Group Play games.
• Knockout Rounds: Eight teams will advance to the Knockout Rounds: the team with the best standing in Group Play games in each of the six groups and two “wild cards” (the team from each conference with the best record in Group Play games that finished second in its group). The Knockout Rounds will consist of single-elimination games in the Quarterfinals (played in NBA team markets on Monday, Dec. 4 and Tuesday, Dec. 5) and Semifinals and Championship (played in Las Vegas on Dec. 7 and Dec. 9, respectively). The Knockout teams will compete for a prize pool and the new In-Season Tournament trophy, the NBA Cup.
And more info…
Knockout Rounds
In each conference, Quarterfinal games will be hosted by the two teams with the best record in Group Play games, and the team with the best record in Group Play games will host the wild card team.
During the Knockout Rounds on days when In-Season Tournament games are not scheduled (Wednesday, Dec. 6 and Friday, Dec. 8), the 22 teams that do not qualify for the Knockout Rounds will each play two regular-season games. The four teams that lose in the Quarterfinals will each play a regular-season game on Dec. 8.
Prize Pool
For the 2023-24 season, the In-Season Tournament prize pool will be allocated to the players on the teams that participate in the Knockout Rounds as follows:
• Players on winning team of Championship: $500,000 each
• Players on losing team of Championship: $200,000 each
• Players on losing team of Semifinals: $100,000 each
• Players on losing team of Quarterfinals: $50,000 each
League Honors
At the conclusion of the In-Season Tournament, the NBA will name the Most Valuable Player of the In-Season Tournament and the All-Tournament Team. Selection will be based on the players’ performance in both Group Play and the Knockout Rounds.
Boy, this doesn’t sound confusing and stupid at all! No sir!
18 replies on “Who Is in the Knicks’ Group for the NBA In-Season Tournament?”
so am i getting this right? some of these games are going to count as regular season games and some aren’t? like if these were all counted as replacements for regular season games i can see the rationale behind doing this if you’re just remixing already existing games….
but some games counting and some not.. is just really confusing…are these additional regular season games or replacing existing ones? and 500k is not really enough of an incentive… if i’m kawhi why would i even play in any of these games? that amount of cash only incentivizes the bench squads from playing and if i’m coaching any of these teams that’s exactly what i would do.. i would send the bench units out there…
it’s hard enough to get guys to finish the regular season .. i’m pretty sure this wasn’t thought all the way through and they’re throwing this out there for the sake of a cash grab instead of actually trying to make this successful….
I have zero interest in this. I don’t get it at all.
The only game that doesn’t count in the regular season standings is the championship game, all other games including the quarter and semifinals will count in the standings.
So the two finalists will play 83 games. How odd.
Wow, the NBA came up with something more complicated than the salary cap
I love the video with Richard Jefferson “simply” explaining it and it isn’t simplified at all.
Like my marriage, I’m going to pretend this never happened.
I love the joke about the how the Best Player in Tournament award should be named after Charles Barkley or Karl Malone.
Fred Katz on Twitter:
Donte DiVincenzo’s contract structure, per source:
2023-24: $10.9M
2024-25: $11.4M
2025-26: $12M
2026-27: $12.5M
Seems less than $50M
Maybe it’s $50M if he hits incentives?
What Alan said
I believe Katz wrote it was 47m over 4yrs with 750K in unlikely bonuses.
The salary goes up less than ten percent each year, so it will probably go down slightly as a percentage of the salary cap.
I guess I am in a minority here as I think it is both a good idea and a very sensible format. It certainly has worked for European football leagues quite well. It is not a money grab (there is exactly 1 extra game played). It turns a bunch of regular season games for bad teams into something of interest. I can envision it supplanting the whole All-Star week-end which has turned into a bit of a joke.
At a CBA big picture level, it is another means to inject more competition and competitive balance into the regular season.
Bernie,
Can you explain to me how it turns these games into something of interest? I’m having a hard time understanding what makes these games more meaningful for the teams or the fans other than just saying it’s a “tournament.” What is the reward for winning this thing?
I see that the players get some extra money but is that really all it is?
Also, would a player who is “injured” or sits out for some reason still get that money if their team wins or goes far?
Does the one extra game on the championship count towards regular season stats or standings?
My extremely limited understanding of how these mid-season tournaments work in European football — aka, stuff I gleaned from several episodes of Ted Lasso season 2 — implies that they’re appealing in large part because everybody gets to compete in them, teams from many levels way down below the big one. This is just a shuffling of the same 30 teams that play each other a lot already. Seems pointless.