What’s at stake for Celtics entering NBA Cup group finale vs. Bulls

What’s at stake for Celtics entering NBA Cup group finale vs. Bulls originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston

The Boston Celtics’ game against the Chicago Bulls on Friday isn’t just any late-November road matchup against a sub-.500 team.

Celtics at Bulls (8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Boston) marks Boston’s final game in the group stage of the 2024 NBA Cup, the league’s in-season tournament. And there’s plenty at stake for the Celtics, who need a win (and some help) to advance to the quarterfinals.

We’ll get into how the C’s can advance to the knockout stage but first, here’s a look at the Group C standings.

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Since the Atlanta Hawks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday, the Celtics cannot win Group C. Atlanta beat Boston in in their group play opener to earn the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Bulls need a win over the C’s to have a shot at overtaking the Hawks.

In addition to the group winners, one “wild card” team from each conference advances to the quarterfinals. The top tiebreaker for wild cards is point differential, so the Celtics would need to have a better point differential than every Eastern Conference team that also went 3-1 but didn’t win its group.

Since there are more group play games next Tuesday, the C’s wouldn’t know the exact point differential needed to win the wild card in this scenario. So, they’d simply have to run the score up on Chicago as much as possible Friday night and hope for the best from Tuesday’s results.

NBC Sports Boston’s Celtics-Bulls coverage begins at 7 p.m. ET with Celtics Pregame Live.