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Normally, a few games on Tuesday night’s schedule — Atlanta at Boston, for example, or Minnesota at Portland — could be considered mismatches and thus lacking some spice. If so, the lens we were looking through was focused on the long run of 82 games leading to two months of playoff survival.

However, there is another short match on the agenda to add some immediacy and freshness to tonight’s eight-match list. This is the start of group play for the second season tournament of the Emirates NBA Cup.

It’s a sprint within the 2024-2025 marathon, a pop quiz that could inform a team and its fans ahead of finals. It might be the closest thing to a reset button for a team unhappy with its early-season performance. In short, the NBA Cup tournament is a great opportunity for players and coaches looking for quick gratification, checks and growing up.

“The Indiana Pacers are the ones I use as an example,” Milwaukee Bucks coach Doc Rivers said. “Young team that literally gained ‘playoff experience’ at the beginning of this year, after which they ended up in the Eastern Conference Finals.

Rivers was on the broadcast side for the first NBA Cup and wasn’t hired by the Bucks until deep into January. Like many, he said he was skeptical of a new wrinkle intended to increase interest in the regular season.

Indiana reached Las Vegas, where the Pacers knocked out Milwaukee, guard Tyrese Haliburton took a small “Dame Time” watch check on the Bucks’ Damian Lillard, but fell to the Lakers in the title game.

“Talk to Rick Carlisle, he said he didn’t know if that would have happened if they didn’t have the season tournament,” Rivers said. “That experience, being on the podium in a big game, even though they laid an egg in that game, taught them a life lesson. You can’t teach that to a team.”

On the line is a trip to Vegas for the four teams that emerge from Group Play and survive the Knockout Round, as well as bragging rights and a $500,000 pot for the winning team. But the biggest benefit may be internal.

Being chosen as one of the teams to play on Christmas Day used to be a highlight of the first three months of the season. Now there is actually something to be gained and early acceleration is needed.

NBA Cup games ‘feel bigger’

“I like it,” Boston guard Jrue Holiday said Sunday. “In the middle of the season we strive for something different. … Obviously we try to win every game. But knowing that this is a new tournament and a new milestone that we are trying to reach, go for it.”

Minnesota Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said: “What surprised me was that the players really treated every match in the tournament like it was an elimination match, even though it was a group match. Because the groups were so small and you play very few group games.”

The league’s 30 teams were divided into six groups of five teams per conference. These teams will play on selected Tuesdays and Fridays in the coming weeks.

Then the six group winners plus one Wild-Card team in each conference – determined by records and then tiebreakers – will compete in the single-elimination quarterfinals on December 10 and December 11, while the other 22 resume regular play. The Vegas action kicks off with two semifinals on December 14 and the title game on December 17.

Said Finch: “It’s also set in the context of the beginning of the season, where everyone is hopeful, everyone still thinks they’re really good and people are still trying to figure out who they really are. So a lot of things happen when those games come. They certainly feel bigger than any other regular season game.

Of course, nothing is guaranteed. The Bucks, Pelicans and Lakers were all eliminated in the first round of the playoffs despite being in hot pursuit of that first Cup. By a composite record of 3-12.

But at that moment, there was a piñata dangling in front of the fiercely competitive NBA players and coaches who were given sticks. Of course they were going to hit.

“The biggest thing for me is if you get to a place where you go to Vegas,” Chicago Bulls coach Billy Donovan said Monday. “That’s where it really gets magnified. We will talk about it.”

Unique focus for cup matches

For a team like the Celtics, the Emirates NBA Cup is a chance to clean up what the defending champions haven’t won yet. For fast-starting Cleveland, it would be a nice new phase and a taste of what’s to come.

“It registers,” Cavs coach Kenny Atkinson said. ‘There’s a title in play. We have a competitive group and we want to win every title available.”

For those less than enthusiastic about the way 2024-2025 has gone so far, this is a prime opportunity to course-correct. Winning group matches is a necessary first step.

“It says something,” admitted Rivers, whose Bucks started 2-8. “(Our) people will take it much more seriously.

“It definitely brought interest to our league. … There were teams that attacked it, and there were teams that just played in it. I think more teams will attack it to win it this year.

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Steve Aschburner has been writing about the NBA since 1980. You can send him an email here his archive here And follow him on X.

The views expressed on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Warner Bros. Discovery.