The Bounce Newsletter | This is The Athletic’s daily NBA newsletter. Sign up here to receive The Bounce directly in your inbox.
Did you want to see Muggsy Bogues posting up childhood Steph Curry? Of course, you did!
Mark Your Calendars!
Your early NBA Cup breakdown
Remember the In-Season Tournament’s debut last year? Weird courts that burned the retinas! Random nights in the regular season when you were told these games were different! Players not quite sure about running up the score as they were reminded point differential mattered! Then, we took the games to Las Vegas, Tyrese Haliburton and the Pacers became stars and the Lakers won the Cup? Well, it’s back! And it has a new name and sponsor.
The NBA announced the East and West groups for the Emirates NBA Cup, which begins group play in-season on Nov. 12. The semifinals and NBA Cup championship will be played on Dec. 14 and 17, respectively. I’ve got thoughts on each group, including a super computer-generated scoring system to rate each group’s toughness on a scale of 1-5 emojis (5 being the toughest). It’s the Group Measured Toughness, or GMT for short. Reminder: The winner from each group moves on to knockout rounds, as does a wild-card team from each conference.
West Group A: Timberwolves, Clippers,…