The Final Four of the NBA’s new in-season tournament will take place on Dec. 7 and 9 in Las Vegas, sources told ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski on Wednesday.
Statistics will count for the league’s regular season, except for the championship game of the event, Wojnarowski reports.
Full details on the competition — including groupings — will be unveiled Saturday night in Las Vegas on ESPN’s “NBA Today,” the league said. Commissioner Adam Silver, recent No. 1 overall picks Victor Wembanyama, Paolo Banchero and Cade Cunningham and All-Stars Anthony Edwards and Trae Young will be part of the broadcast.
The in-season tournament will debut for the 2023-24 season, and details of it were unveiled officially in the league’s new collective bargaining agreement that went into effect Saturday.
All teams will participate in the group stage, which will consist of six groups total — three per conference — and chosen by a random draw based on teams’ winning percentage the previous season. Each team will play four games in its group, with the six group winners making the knockout stage, along with two wild cards who finished with the best winning percentage and not first in their groups.
Knockout-stage games will be single elimination through the final.
Silver has pushed for the past several years for the in-season event to be added, and he has often compared the notion of an in-season tournament to what is commonly seen in European soccer.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.