The knockout phase of the 2024 NBA Cup is underway, and four teams are still alive in the fight for the season tournament title: the Bucks, Hawks, Thunder and Rockets. The semi-finals take place on Saturdayand the title match will take place Tuesday night, with all remaining matches being played in Las Vegas. There’s more to it than just a trophy and bragging rights.
Players from the eight teams who reached the round of 16 receive monetary bonuses. But there’s a major difference between what players will receive if they win the NBA Cup or if they just make it to the quarterfinals and lose. Here are the details of the compensation amounts for players who make it past the group stage:
- Losing players in quarterfinals: $51,497
- Players who lost in the semi-final: $102,994
- Losing players in the championship game: $205,988
- Players who win the NBA Cup: $514,971
So players from the Knicks, Magic, Mavericks and Warriors – who all lost in the quarterfinals earlier this week – receive $51,497. The semi-final losers will receive double this amount.
Payouts are slightly higher than last year’s tournament, in accordance with the league’s CBA, which states that prize money will increase by taking the base number from the first year of the NBA Cup and multiplying it by “basketball-related income”. (BRI) growth factor.
“For each subsequent salary cap year: (A) for each (NBA Cup) player on the team that wins the final game of the (NBA Cup), an amount equal to $500,000 multiplied by the “salary cap factor BIS growth” for this salary cap year; (B) for each IST player on the team that loses the IST Finals game, an amount equal to $200,000 multiplied by the BIS Growth Factor for that salary cap year (C); each IST player on a team that loses an IST semifinal game, $100,000 multiplied by the BIS growth factor for that salary cap year; and (D) for each IST player on a team that loses an IST quarterfinal match, $50,000 multiplied by BIS growth; Factor in this salary cap year.
The BIS growth factor, according to the ABC, is “a fraction whose numerator is BIS for the immediately preceding salary cap year and whose denominator is BIS for the 2022-23 salary cap year; The NBA and the Players’ Association may agree to reduce the BIS growth factor for one (1) or more salary cap years to a smaller fraction with a value of at least one (1).
So basically, there has been a nearly 3% increase in prize money across the board for the NBA Cup, a number that is expected to continue to rise each season as the league continues to make more money .
For players on two-way or 10-day contracts, the CBA states that they “shall count for one half of a single-elimination game for which that player was on the team’s active or inactive roster.” That means a player on a two-way contract on the team that wins the 2024 NBA Cup title would receive $257,485.50 instead of $514,971.
