The NBA Cup Thread 2025-2026 (Quarterfinals December 9-10)

[bisme37]

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[Cubbies2120]

With JamRay playing like he's been playing lately, I don't see anyone beating the Nuggets. JamRay playing like prime '23 JamRay...

[Blue_and_Whte]

With JamRay playing like he's been playing lately, I don't see anyone beating the Nuggets. JamRay playing like prime '23 JamRay...

Hey do you guys call him JamRay, I can’t tell.

Anyway, should be a W for Orlando.

[bisme37]

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[bisme37]

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[Clav]

Really nice matchups this year! I hope we can get Wemby back for this one @ LA.

Some interesting tidbits I have gleaned :

All matchups will ensure that there are 5-game RS matchups -- for the R1 teams.

TOR/NYK, ORL/MIA, SAS/LAL, and OKC/PHX will matchup an extra game for RS, 5 total.

All finals games will be uncounted RS games, and are scored as only NBA Cup stats and record. [in limbo]

EC --
R1:
Raptors and Knicks play their first RS matchup tomorrow (NOV 30).
Orlando is 1-0 on MIA, with another matchup coming up on Friday before the knockout game - a good test for both.

SF:
Miami is 2-1 vs NYK right now, three matchups already
Orlando is 2-0 vs NYK, with an upcoming matchup prior to the NBA Cup 2nd round, should both advance.
Heat do not play Toronto until late DEC, so there's not a head-to-head game against each other prior to R2.

WC --
R1:
OKC is 1-0 vs PHX (their most recent NBA Cup game).
LAL is 1-0 vs Spurs

SF:
OKC Will play Spurs for first time in R2 should both advance., and is 1-0 vs LAL
PHX is 1-0 vs Spurs
LAL and PHX play their first RS game on Monday, should they meet in the 2nd round this is a good test as well.


Finals:

LA is 1-0 vs MIA, plays @TOR before R1.
All other teams have not, nor will not, play each other prior to the NBA Cup Finals.

[K N U C K L E S]

I think once the league is at 32-teams this tournament becomes a lot more interesting. You can nuke divisions from the regular season, and then have the NBA Cup be where divisions come into play.

I would love divisions to mean something again besides just a tiebreaker for home court advantage in the finals. Especially because the Heat have owned their division for the last ~25 years because it's been the weakest division in the league during that time. The league obviously doesn't care about making divisions mean something again since they haven't repealed the Dallas Mavericks rule yet. It's never happened again since 2006 that 2 teams in the same division won 60+ games. That rule has also screwed the Heat over twice. 2 seasons in a row, they won their division and had the same record as Chicago(Who didn't win their division), but Chicago had home court advantage in the first round both seasons because of some other tiebreaker(Head-to-head record probably). I think one season the Heat won the series and the other they lost it.

If I ever meet Marc Cuban, I'm gonna kick him in the nuts until they pop for the Dallas Mavericks rule.

[K N U C K L E S]

All finals games will be uncounted RS games, and are scored as only NBA Cup stats and record. [in limbo]

The NBA is lucky it's not MLB. MLB would never allow zombie stats. Back when they had tie breaker games in between the regular season and the playoffs, the stats for the tiebreaker game counted towards the regular season. Can we please call NBA Cup stats zombie stats from now on ? I don't know if that's the best euphemism, but it sounds cool. And I don't think euphemism is quite the right word, but you know what I mean.

What of somebody scores 101 points in an NBA cup game? Does Wilt Chamberlain still have the record? I can't wait to hear the sports pundits discuss this when NBA records are eventually inevitably broken in NBA Cup games. Didn't it already happen once? The way scoring is in the league now and because teams run up the score because of the point differential tiebreaker, Chamberlain's record may be going down soon. Scoring 100 points in a game really isn't that hard. You just have to hit 4 3's every 6 minutes with 4 free throws mixed in. You have a whole 1.5 minutes to hit each shot. Of course Chamberlain didn't need 3's to get 100 points. He might've gotten 120 points if the NBA had 3's back then. In his case, he had a whole minute to hit each of his 2 point shots + 4 free throws mixed in somewhere.