The Celtics have their last group stage game Friday night. Here are the possible scenarios as the tournament moves towards knockout rounds.
On Friday night, the Celtics will conclude NBA Cup group stage play with a road contest against the Chicago Bulls.
In the NBA Cup, a team plays each of the other four teams in its group once during group stage play.
The team with the best record advances to the knockout rounds. There will be six group winners and two wild card teams (one per conference) that advance to the quarterfinals. From there, it’s a single elimination tournament to decide the NBA Cup champion.
The Celtics and Hawks, both 2-1, are sitting atop the East Group C standings. The Cavs, Bulls, and Wizards each have two games to go.
The tiebreakers, in order, are: head-to-head record, point differential, total points scored in group play, record from last year’s regular-season. If an additional tiebreaker is needed after those ones, there would be a random drawing.
The Celtics would need a win against the Bulls and for the Cavaliers to beat Atlanta to emerge as the East Group C winner.
The Celtics have a group stage loss to the Hawks, so Atlanta owns the head-to-head tiebreaker over them. A loss to the Cavs would drop the Hawks to 2-2 while the Celtics would be 3-1.
Cleveland would be tied with the Celtics if they beat Washington and Atlanta. The Celtics have the head-to-head tiebreaker over the Cavs because of their 120-117 victory over Cleveland at TD Garden earlier this month.
