AfriPulse
It’s the end of November in the NBA, and lately, that has meant one thing: the culmination of group play for the NBA Cup . The format was once again altered this season, with the group stage of the tournament held until the end of November. The week of Thanksgiving was instead stacked with three days of NBA Cup action to give fans with a bit more time on their hands some marquee basketball to watch.
Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday all featured group stage games for the Cup, and Friday’s slate concluded that round of the tournament. We now know the eight teams that will advance to the knockout stage: the Knicks, Magic, Raptors and Heat in the East, and the Thunder, Lakers, Spurs and Suns in the West.
Quarterfinal games will still be played in home venues , which is good news for the Lakers, Thunder, Magic and Raptors, who will be hosting. After that, the final four shifts to Las Vegas for the semifinal and championship game. Those games are still to come, but for now, let’s look at some of the big-picture winners and losers of the now-completed group stage.
2025 NBA Cup bracket: Knicks, Magic, Thunder, Spurs win group stages to advance to knockout rounds
Cameron Salerno
Winner: Orlando Magic It’s no secret that the beginning of the season was shaky for the Magic. The last thing anyone wants after trading four first-round picks for a player who has never made an All-Star Game in Desmond Bane is a 4-6 start that raises questions about the team’s fit. The turning point came in Game No. 11, in which Bane hit a game-winning 3-pointer that sparked the turnaround. The Magic are 8-2 in their last 10, with Friday’s win over the Eastern Conference-leading Detroit Pistons clinching their group and sending them to the knockout stage.
A win like that can be validating. Yes, the first couple of weeks were tough for the Magic, but they’ve seemingly put those struggles behind them. They’ve had both a top-10 offense and defense in this 10-game stretch, a rarity for a Magic team that has spent 13 years in the bottom 10 offensively. Just getting to Vegas would be proof of concept for Orlando, a chance to show that this is a team built for big games. There aren’t many of those this early in the season, but the Magic took their first on Friday, and now they have at least one more ahead of them.
Loser: Milwaukee Bucks A seventh straight loss for the Bucks is obviously the bigger story. The feel-good vibes of their 8-5 start have seemingly passed, and a team that’s desperate to win to appease Giannis Antetokounmpo ahead of his extension-eligibility is probably going to start feeling the heat soon.
But that’s not the only disappointment. The defending NBA Cup champion Bucks have now been eliminated from their repeat bid. Meanwhile, the 2023 champion Lakers stormed through their group with a 4-0 record. Now, the Lakers still have a long way to go as they seek a second Cup championship, but if they manage to win their next three tournament games, they’ll have claimed two of the first three NBA Cups. If that happens, Milwaukee’s 2024 trophy probably gets forgotten and the early stages of Cup history, much like overall NBA history, get written by the Lakers.
Winners: Toronto Raptors and Phoenix Suns Every NBA Cup features a breakout from a surprise team. The inaugural event was the world’s introduction to Tyrese Haliburton as the Indiana Pacers went on a Cinderella run to Las Vegas that would eventually prove to be the beginning of something much bigger. A year later, it was the Houston Rockets bullying their way to Vegas and ultimately losing a semifinal rock fight to the Thunder before ultimately emerging as a Western Conference contender later in the year.
We have two candidates this year: the Raptors and Suns. Toronto is 14-5 so far this season and won their group with an undefeated 4-0 record. The Suns pushed the Thunder to the brink on Friday and otherwise swept the rest of their group as they’ve emerged as as a far more balanced team than last year’s star-driven disaster. Both have drastically exceeded expectations, but both come with real questions.
The Raptors have tied for the NBA’s sixth-easiest schedule thus far this year, and that doesn’t include opponents’ injuries that they’ve benefitted from. They’ve beaten Cleveland three times, for instance, but Darius Garland played in none of those games and Jarrett Allen played in one. The Suns have faced an even easier slate. In fact, only the Thunder had played worse opponents as of Friday. Both of these teams need some marquee wins against true contenders to earn real respect across the league. Well, the NBA Cup is a chance to do that. Make it to Vegas and suddenly you’re playing top teams on the biggest regular-season stage available. So let’s see it. If either of these teams is for real, let’s see them get to Vegas like the Rockets and Pacers did.
Loser: Houston Rockets The Rockets have lost four games all year. Half of them have been in the NBA Cup. One was a road loss to Victor Wembanyama’s Spurs. The other was a three-point loss to Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets. That’s all it took to knock Houston out. Tournaments like these always have a group of death. This year, it was West Group C, which also featured the plucky Portland Trail Blazers and the grizzled Golden State Warriors. There wasn’t an easy win to be found in that group. Someone good was going to miss out — it turned out to be Houston. Fortunately, the Rockets at least got their Vegas trip last winter. At this point, they’re focused on a different trophy.
Winner: Los Angeles Lakers We’ve already covered the concept of a possible Laker dynasty in the NBA Cup, but there’s something a bit more meaningful to watch here. The Lakers haven’t lost since LeBron James returned last week, but they haven’t exactly faced a murderer’s row of opponents. Two wins over Utah followed by victories over the Clippers and Mavericks feel more like a way to ease James back into the fold than any sort of meaningful statements.
The Lakers need a measuring stick. The Spurs without Wembanyama may not qualify (more on them in a moment), but a trip to Vegas that would almost certainly include a date with the 18-1 Thunder certainly would. The last time the Lakers faced the Thunder, they got absolutely walloped. James didn’t play in that game. He presumably would in a Vegas showdown. That’s the best possible game this bracket can give us, and it’s the best chance the Lakers will have to size themselves up against the competition early in the season.
Loser: The NBA Look, the NBA has no official preference when it comes to which teams advance in the tournament or in the playoffs for that matter. But before we even get into market-related conspiracies, we can at least acknowledge a league-wide desire for healthier teams to advance into these marquee games. This is the dilemma San Antonio’s advancement has created.
If Wembanyama were healthy, everyone would be thrilled to have the Spurs in the quarterfinals. Everyone wants to see him play high-profile games. But Wembanyama is sidelined with a calf strain. There is no telling at this point whether Wembanyama will be available to play when the quarterfinals commence a bit more than a week from now. The Spurs could obviously win without him — they did against Denver on Friday. But come on, the world wants to see Wemby in Vegas, not the Wembyettes. Had Denver won on Friday, it would be the Nuggets advancing to the quarterfinals and setting up a fascinating Western Conference foursome featuring three title contenders and the upstart Suns. Instead, we’re all left hoping that Wembanyama can make it back in time to face the Lakers.
Source: CBS Sports | Read the Full Story…
