What's at stake for the Raptors in the in-season tournament?
After a few weeks of sitting on the sidelines, the Toronto Raptors will finally get a taste of a new form of NBA action.
Tonight, 5-6 Toronto plays host to the Boston Celtics, who come into the contest at 9-2 and sitting atop the Eastern Conference. But the game is also part of the NBA in-season tournament, a newly created competition intended to put a bit of extra emphasis on the league’s regular season, including specialized home courts for the occasion.
Amazingly, the Raptors are the NBA’s only team that hasn’t played in one of these games yet, so we’ll give you a quick run-through of how the competition works.
Each team is divided into one of six groups (three in each conference), with the winners of each group and two wildcards moving on to the tournament quarterfinals on December 4 and 5, with the semifinals and finals held in Las Vegas on December 7 and 9.
All teams that don’t advance will have two more regular-season games scheduled (each team currently only has 82 to accommodate for the tournament).
Players that advance to the knockout stages can earn between $50,000 (for losing in the quarterfinals) and $500,000 for winning the newly minted NBA Cup.
Here’s what the standings currently look like in Group C heading into tonight’s games, as the Orlando Magic and the Chicago Bulls will also be facing off at 8 pm ET:
As you can see, the standings are a little messy right now with an uneven amount of games played. Either way, Toronto would need to win at least three games — and potentially four — to advance to the quarterfinals, with six teams already sporting 2-0 records across the league in this tournament.
And because there are likely to be several ties across the standings league-wide, head-to-head record during Group Play games is the first tie-breaker and point differential during Group Play games is the second tie-breaker.