NBA Cup schedule: Klay Thompson visiting Warriors, LeBron James vs. Victor Wembanyama highlight opening night

The NBA Cup will begin its second year as the league’s in-season tournament on Tuesday, Nov. 12 and will feature a handful of interesting matchups right away.

Opening night will see the Philadelphia 76ers and New York Knicks play in a rematch of their 2024 first-round playoff series. Later that evening, Klay Thompson will return to Golden State to face his old team as the Dallas Mavericks take on the Warriors.

The second night of games on Friday, Nov. 15 will see LeBron James and Victor Wembanyama, who just faced off in the Olympic gold medal game, meet when the inaugural NBA Cup champion Los Angeles Lakers visit the San Antonio Spurs.

You can check out the full group schedule here.

Here are the six groups for the 2024 NBA Cup:

For the tournament, all 30 NBA teams were drawn into groups of five within their conference and based on their 2023-24 regular-season records. Each team plays one game against the other four opponents in its group.

Group play for the 2024 NBA Cup will take place on Tuesdays and Fridays from Nov. 12 – Dec. 3. There will be no regular-season games played on those nights — only those that are part of the tournament.

The Tuesday “Cup Nights” are scheduled for Nov. 12, 19, 26 and Dec. 3, and the Fridays on Nov. 15, 22, and 29.

The eight teams that emerge from group play (winners of each group, along with a wild-card team in each conference) will match up in single-elimination knockout rounds on Dec. 10-11 before advancing to the semifinals (Dec. 14) and championship game (Dec. 17) held at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

The 22 teams that do not qualify for the knockout round quarterfinals will have two regular-season games added to their schedules, played on Dec. 12-13 and Dec. 15-16. Losing teams from the quarterfinals will be matched up in regular-season games on Dec. 12-16.

The NBA Cup champions and second-place club split money from a prize pool. Each player from the winning team received $500,000, while the runners-up each got $200,000.