A Heat season that so far has exceeded all expectations will include the franchise’s first appearance in the quarterfinal round of the NBA Cup, the league’s early season tournament that debuted in 2023.
Miami on Friday advanced to the eight-team knockout round as the Eastern Conference’s wild card team. Besides winning three of its four Cup games, Miami got the help it needed on Friday when Atlanta beat Cleveland and Orlando defeated Detroit.
The Heat will be the East’s fourth (of four) seeds and play at Orlando in the single-elimination quarterfinal round on Dec. 9 or 10.
The No. 3 Knicks will play the No. 2 Raptors in Toronto in the other Eastern Conference semifinal.
The winners of the Heat-Magic and Knicks-Toronto games will meet in a semifinal game on Dec. 13 in Las Vegas.
The Heat, which has gone 3-1 in Cup play so far, would have won Group C if the Bucks had beaten the Knicks on Friday night at Madison Square Garden.
But New York won, 118-109, to finish 3-1 in Group C and won the tiebreaker against the Heat by virtue of their 140-132 Cup game win against the Heat on Nov. 14. The fact that the Heat has beaten the Knicks in two other meeting this season had no bearing on the Cup standings.
The Heat clinched a spot in the Cup quarterfinals about 15 minutes before the Knicks game went final.
The Heat got some help from Atlanta, which beat Cleveland 130-123. The Cavs would have finished ahead of the Heat in the battle for the wild card if they had defeated the Hawks by at least 17 points.
The Heat also got some help from Orlando, which beat Detroit 112-109. If the Pistons had won by 12 points or fewer, Detroit would have won Group B and Orlando would have beaten out Miami for the one Eastern Conference wild card spot.
For teams in different groups, the NBA uses point differential in group play games to break ties. As it turned out, a tiebreaker for the wild card wasn’t necessary because the Heat was the only non-group winner to finish 3-1 in group play.
Every NBA Cup game counts in the standings except for the championship game.
The four teams that lose in the quarterfinals will each play a regular-season game on Dec. 11, 12, 14 or 15 to fill the missing game in their 82-game schedules.
For the four teams that win in the quarterfinals, their 82nd game will come in the semifinals. And the two teams that advance to the championship game will play an extra game (an 83rd game).
The semifinals and championship game of the event will be played at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas on Dec. 13 and Dec. 16.
The 22 teams that don’t advance to the quarterfinals will play two regular season games to fill the missing two game in the 82-game schedules.
Miami will play five non-Cup games before its Cup semifinal: on Saturday at home against Detroit (8 p.m., FanDuel Sports Sun), Monday against the visiting Clippers, Wednesday at Dallas, next Friday night at Orlando and Dec. 6 at home against Sacramento.
Each Heat player on a standard contract will receive $53,093 for advancing to the knockout round; the Heat’s three players on two-way contracts receive half of that amount. A victory against Orlando would net each Heat player an additional $106,187 for advancing to the Cup semifinals.
The per-player payout for winning the Cup championship in $530,933; the players who lose in the championship game pocket $212,373 apiece.