2024 NBA Cup scores, takeaways: Joel Embiid already rethinking plan; Hawks, Blazers as potential Cinderellas?

The 2024 NBA Cup tipped off Tuesday night with the first eight games on the schedule in the league’s in-season tournament. While the event has a fancy new name (the Emirates NBA Cup) and revamped court designs, the broad concept remains the same: six groups of five teams play each other once apiece. 

Next month, the six group winners at two wild-card teams advance to the knockout stage, and after quarterfinals are played in home venues, the final four teams standing move to Vegas to play for the Cup. The final is set for Dec. 17.

So, what were the highlights of Tuesday’s slate? The two biggest games both featured significant returns. Joel Embiid struggled in his season debut against the New York Knicks, a loss for the Philadelphia 76ers that brought them to 2-8 on the season. Klay Thompson was far better in his return to the Bay Area as a member of the Dallas Mavericks, but not even his six 3-pointers could overcome Stephen Curry’s 35-point explosion as the Golden State Warriors escaped with a 120-117 victory. And, if you’re into chaos, Erik Spoelstra blew a game for the Miami Heat by calling a timeout that they didn’t have.

While some games may have been more notable than others, every game that was played on Tuesday ultimately mattered as they will all count equally in the NBA Cup’s group standings. So, with one night of tournament play now in the books, let’s cover what we’ve seen thus far. Below we’ll include the scores from all eight of Tuesday’s games as well as some key takeaways from tonight’s action. 

Tuesday’s NBA Cup scores

• Hawks 117, Celtics 116
• Pistons 123, Heat 121
• Magic 114, Hornets 89
• Knicks 111, 76ers 99
• Bucks 99, Raptors 85
• Suns 120, Jazz 112
• Warriors 120, Mavericks 117
• Trail Blazers 122, Timberwolves 108

76ers already reconsidering Joel Embiid plan?

All season, we’ve treated Joel Embiid’s absence in at least one half of 76ers’ back-to-backs as a given. He openly told us he didn’t expect to play back-to-backs anymore, and it fit with the sort of offseason the team just had. The 76ers gave Paul George a max contract. George is 34 and has injury problems of his own, and he joined the 76ers to try to win championships. That won’t happen if either of them get hurt, so the theory all along has been that Philadelphia would be cautious with both during the regular season.

Perhaps a 2-8 start has changed the team’s tune. After Tuesday’s loss to the Knicks, coach Nick Nurse claimed that neither George nor Embiid had been ruled out for Wednesday’s game against the unbeaten Cleveland Cavaliers. Embiid himself said that he hoped to play, but the decision was out of his hands. On Wednesday, we’ll get a better idea of how seriously we should take Embiid on this front. For all we know this is just gamesmanship to throw off Cleveland. 

But Embiid’s status has serious ramifications for both sides. The relatively weak Eastern Conference does give the 76ers some leeway to exercise restraint here. Philadelphia trails the No. 3 seed Orlando Magic by only three games. But the deeper the hole the 76ers dig now, the harder it will be to climb out of later in the season. Meanwhile, the Cavaliers are undefeated at 12-0, and if Embiid does indeed sit on Wednesday, they’d have a relatively clear path to a heavyweight NBA Cup bout with the defending postseason champion Boston Celtics next Tuesday. A healthy Embiid is a greater obstacle to Cleveland reaching that game at 15-0 than either the Hawks or the Bulls, so the rest of the league will be watching Embiid’s status closely.

Could Stephen Curry be this year’s LeBron James?

Last year’s In-Season Tournament revolved around two main characters. In one corner sat Tyrese Haliburton, the burgeoning new star. The tournament was his launching pad into the mainstream. In the other sat LeBron James, the NBA’s ultimate mainstream star. The contrast between the two is a big part of what made the whole thing work. The narratives wrote themselves. It was the sort of final matchup that never would have been possible across a full postseason, but a single-elimination tournament put two welcome but unexpected stars front and center.

As we’ll cover in a bit, it’s too early to tell who this year’s Haliburton could be. As for the LeBron? Curry made his initial claim to the title with a monster game against the Mavericks on Tuesday. His 37-point, nine-assist, six-rebound stat line doesn’t do him justice. Curry owned the end of the game. Golden State lost the minutes that he rested by 21 points… but it didn’t matter because they won the minutes he played by 24. His 3-pointer to take a four-point lead with 27.1 seconds to play was vintage Curry, the sort of moment we might not get too many more of now that he’s 36. If last year’s tournament was a victory lap for James as he enters his twilight, it could simultaneously be something similar for Curry, but also something a bit more meaningful in the context of the immediate championship picture.

Curry’s Warriors are now 9-2. A blowout loss to Cleveland aside, they’ve just taken down the Celtics, Thunder and Mavericks in less than a week. They are in this tournament’s group of death, and while the Mavericks are now behind them, they still have huge matchups looming against the Denver Nuggets and Memphis Grizzlies before they can even think about Vegas. The Warriors have a long way to go, but if they can make an extended run in this tournament combined with the regular-season wins they’ve already racked up, it’s going to get pretty difficult to deny Golden State’s status as an immediate championship contender. Even James’ run to the In-Season Tournament title a year ago didn’t mean as much in the race for June’s more significant trophy.

Plenty of Cinderella candidates in this tournament

The Pacers announced themselves as last year’s tournament Cinderella fairly quickly. They won their first two group play games against contenders in Cleveland and Philadelphia, and they were off to the races from there. We don’t have quite as easy a pick after only a single slate of gates thus far. Instead, several possible candidates emerged.

Tuesday featured a number of monster upsets. Chief among them? The Atlanta Hawks, playing without star point guard Trae Young, beat the reigning champion Celtics in Boston as a 16.5-point underdog. The game belonged to Dyson Daniels, the young forward Atlanta acquired in the Dejounte Murray trade, who racked up 28 points and seven assists, but more importantly, he reached six steals for the third consecutive game. Daniels now has 36 steals in 10 games and is leading the NBA with 76 total deflections. No other player has more than 44. Haliburton broke out last season as the league’s brightest new offensive star. Daniels is making his statement on defense.

But Atlanta wasn’t the only team to score a big upset on Tuesday. The Portland Trail Blazers dispatched the Minnesota Timberwolves relatively comfortably, and while there wasn’t a single signature performance in the bunch, a tournament run could serve as an opportunity for young guards like Scoot Henderson and Shaedon Sharpe to play in high-leverage games before the Blazers are ready to compete for the playoffs. The same could be said for Jaden Ivey and Cade Cunningham in Detroit. The Pistons stunned the Heat, 123-121, thanks to Spoelstra’s timeout faux pas.

A one-game sample tells us almost nothing. It’s entirely possible we’ve already seen tournament peaks for the Hawks, Pistons and Blazers. But part of the fun of this whole event is how small the sample is. These teams have no chance to win trophies in May and June. But if they can just stay hot for a couple of weeks? They have a chance to earn one in December.