The new tournament will have some disruption on the status quo. Teams will only have 80 games accounted for in their schedules when they are released before the season; two other games will be marked TBD. The 22 teams that don’t qualify for the knockout stage will have those two other games scheduled on nights of the tournament group stage.
The losing quarterfinalists will play each other during the night of the semis. All of those games will count as regular-season games, too. At least 24 teams are guaranteed to play the normal 41 home games, while two to four teams will only play 40 home games, and anywhere from zero to two teams could play 42 home games.
Aside from including another elimination game into the season and handing out a new trophy, Wasch said there will be new jerseys for each team specifically for the in-season tournament and a new setup inside the arena.
The team that wins the tournament will be crowned with the NBA Cup. Each player on the winning team will take home $500,000; players on the second-place team will get $200,000 each; players on losing semi-finals teams will get $100,000 each; and the quarterfinalists will earn $50,000 per player. Those amounts will go up each season in proportion to the BRI growth each year.