Emirates NBA Cup 2026 Standings: Every Group Table and Wild Card Race

How Emirates NBA Cup Standings Actually Work

Unlike the regular NBA standings, which rank all 15 teams in a conference against each other over 82 games, Cup standings only compare the five teams sitting inside the same group over four games apiece. Every team already knows exactly which four opponents count toward this table, because the groups were locked in back in June — you can see the full breakdown of which teams landed in which group if you haven’t checked yours yet.

Two separate things get tracked at once, and mixing them up is the single most common source of confusion:

• Group standings — where a team ranks among the four other teams in its own group.
• Wild card standings — a separate ranking that only includes every group’s second-place finisher, compared across the whole conference.

The reason that second list exists comes down to how the eight-team Knockout bracket actually fills up. Six of those spots are simple: the winner of each of the six groups advances automatically, no matter how the rest of the conference looks. The remaining two spots — one per conference — go to a wild card team instead.

Here’s the part that catches people out: finishing 2nd in your group guarantees nothing. It just earns you a seat in a separate race against the other two 2nd-place teams in your conference, with only one of the three actually advancing. A team can go a strong 3-1 in a brutal group, land in 2nd place, and still get bumped from the wild card race by another team that also went 3-1 in an easier group — because at that point the two are being compared directly against each other, not against the teams they already played. That’s the wild card race: a genuine, separate competition layered on top of the six group races, deciding who gets the last two tickets into the Knockout Rounds.

How to Read the Status Column

Once games are underway, official NBA Cup tables lean on single-letter shorthand that’s never actually explained anywhere near the table itself. Here’s what each tag means in plain terms:

Every team’s four games are already locked in — you can look up any matchup, including which ones are home and which are road games, on the full Group Play matchup breakdown.

When Do These Standings Start Updating?

Group Play tips off on Friday, October 30, 2026, and runs through November 27, with every team playing its four group games on designated Cup Nights along the way. The tables above start moving the moment those first scores are final — for exact dates, tip-off times, and which network is carrying each game, check the complete schedule and TV broadcast guide.

If you’d rather just watch the scores land in real time instead of refreshing this page, the live scoreboard tracks every Cup Night game as it happens.

What Happens When Teams Tie

Four games is a small enough sample that ties at the top of a group are common, and each column in the tables above feeds directly into how a tie gets resolved. Rather than repeat that sequence here, the complete rules and format breakdown walks through it step by step, including how it applies differently to the wild card race.

Watching the Games That Move These Numbers

Every row above only updates because a specific game got played somewhere — figuring out exactly where to watch is its own question, and the streaming guide already answers it in full. If your team clinches a home Knockout Round spot off the back of these standings, seats for that stage move fast — the ticket guide covers Group Play, Knockout, and Championship seating separately, since they’re sold through different channels.

Frequently Asked Questions