The second annual NBA Cup is happening during the 2024-25 season and the Los Angeles Lakers will look to defend their championship in the inaugural tournament from last season. Commissioner Adam Silver added the NBA Cup as a way of putting some intrigue and flair into the early part of the regular season.
In addition to the players competing for a contract bonus and the pride of a championship, the tournament also provides the franchises a means to get creative with court design. Each team is asked to re-design their courts to differentiate the regular season from the NBA Cup.
And in 2024-25, the Lakers court at Crypto.com Arena will feature the outline of the Los Angeles skyline, along with some other intriguing details, L.A. unveiled on Thursday morning.
Featuring the Los Angeles skyline for the first time, our official NBA Cup Court 💜 pic.twitter.com/i6D6fK651z
— Los Angeles Lakers (@Lakers) October 24, 2024
The court clearly features the entirety of the L.A. skyline, but has some other cool design features as well. It has three NBA Cup trophies on it, one at half court and the other two making up the painted areas on each side of the court.
There are 17 stars on the sideline with years in them to represent each of the Lakers’ championships. It’s an extremely clean design that doesn’t pull too much focus with an overly bright color scheme but has intriguing details for fans to focus on if they look closely.
Lakers’ NBA Cup schedule released
The Lakers will be looking to repeat as champions and find themselves in Group B along with the Phoenix Suns, San Antonio Spurs, Oklahoma City Thunder and Utah Jazz.
The format for the tournament is unchanged as group play games will be taking place on ‘Cup Nights’ on Tuesdays and Fridays from Nov. 12 until Dec. 3. Each team will play one game against the other teams in its group with two coming at home and two on the road.
Following that, eight teams will advance to the knockout round, the six group winners as well as one wildcard team from each conference. That wildcard team is the team with the best record that finished second in their group with point differential being the tiebreaker.
The quarterfinals will take place on Dec. 10 and 11 with the tournament once again concluding with the semifinals and championship at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The semifinals will take place on Dec. 14 while the finals will go down on Dec. 17.
Nov. 15: at San Antonio Spurs, 4:30 p.m. PT (ESPN)
Nov. 19: vs. Utah Jazz, 7:30 p.m. PT
Nov. 26: at Phoenix Suns, 7 p.m. PT (TNT)
Nov. 29: vs. Oklahoma City Thunder, 7 p.m. PT (ESPN)
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