Atlanta Hawks placed in Group C of the East with the Celtics, Cavs, Bulls and Wizards

Although it is not called the in-season tournament this year, the new NBA Cup is hoping to have the same success as last year’s in-season tournament. The groups for this year’s NBA Cup were revealed tonight and the Atlanta Hawks are placed in Group C of the East with the Boston Celtics, Cleveland Cavaliers, Chicago Bulls and Washington Wizards.

Here’s how the NBA Cup works, courtesy of nba.com:

“The 2024 Emirates NBA Cup, the NBA’s second annual in-season competition, will kick off on Tuesday, November 12 in team markets and conclude with the semifinals (Saturday, December 14) and championship (Tuesday, December 17) at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The full schedule will be released in August.

The Emirates NBA Cup will take place in two stages: Group game and the Knockout stages.

> A. Group play

The 30 teams have been drawn into groups of five within their conference based on their win-loss records from the 2023-24 regular season. Beginning Tuesday, Nov. 12 and ending Tuesday, Dec. 3, each team will play four designated group games on “cup nights” – one game against each opponent in their group, with two games at home and two away.

Eight teams will advance to the knockout stages: the team with the highest group-play finish in each of the six groups and two “wild cards” (the team from each conference with the best group-play record and who finished second in their group). The knockout stages will consist of single-elimination games in the quarterfinals (played in NBA team markets on Tuesday, December 10 and Wednesday, December 11) and the semifinals and championship games (played in Las Vegas on December 14 and December 17, respectively). The knockout teams will compete for a prize pool and the NBA Cup championship trophy.

All 67 games from both stages of the Emirates NBA Cup will count towards the regular season standings, with the exception of the Championship. Each team will continue to play 82 regular season games in the 2024-25 season, including games in the group stages and knockout stages.

Fourteen group stage games (two games per cup night) and all seven knockout stage games will be televised nationally. Emirates NBA Cup group stage game and broadcast schedules will be announced in August.

The round of 16 will be a knockout stage for the eight teams that qualify from the group stages, starting with the quarter-finals on 10 and 11 December. The winning teams will advance to the semi-finals on neutral ground on 14 December, and then to the championship on 17 December.

Matches played in the first and second rounds of the knockout stages (i.e. the quarter-finals and semi-finals, respectively) will count as regular season matches for all intents and purposes. The Championship will not count as a regular season match, meaning that the match will not count towards a team’s regular season record, and a player’s or team’s performance will not count towards regular season statistics.

In each conference, quarterfinal games will be played by the two teams with the best record in group play, and the team with the best record in group play will host the wild card team. In the event that two or more teams are tied for the top seed in a conference, the tie between the teams will be broken using the same tiebreaking protocol as described above.

During the knockout stages, on days when no Emirates NBA Cup matches are scheduled (December 12-13 and December 15-16), the 22 teams that do not qualify for the knockout stages will each play two regular season matches.

A systematic approach will determine the matchups for these games using each conference’s group stage standings (5th through 15th). Two of the 22 games will be scheduled interconferences, as there will be an odd number of teams in each conference that do not advance to the quarterfinals. These interconference games will be scheduled between the lowest-ranked teams in the group stage, subject to travel constraints, and no team will play more than one of its two interconference games. The remaining 20 games will be scheduled within the conference, featuring teams that are normally scheduled to play each other three times during the season, where possible.

The losing teams from each conference’s quarterfinals will face off in a regular-season game on December 12, 13, 15 or 16.

This group is not invincible for the Hawks, although it will be difficult to beat the reigning NBA champion Celtics. Boston could be without Kristaps Porzingis, however. Cleveland returns a talented starting five and will be considered the Celtics’ biggest challenger. Washington and Chicago will be among the worst teams in the league.