Knicks beat Magic and advance to knockout round of NBA Cup, setting up meeting with Hawks

NEW YORK — For a few minutes Tuesday, the Knicks’ hopes of moving on to the next round of the NBA Cup appeared to be in jeopardy.

The red-hot Orlando Magic, winners in 12 of their last 13 games, drained 3-pointers on their first three possessions, jumping out to a 9-2 lead in the win-and-advance affair at Madison Square Garden.

It was an early deficit against the NBA’s best defense.

But in the end, the Knicks’ high-powered offense prevailed in the NBA’s equivalent of an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.

With their 121-106 victory, the Knicks won the NBA Cup’s Eastern Conference Group A, finishing with a perfect 4-0 record in the group-play round of the in-season tournament.

The Knicks now advance to the knockout round, where they’ll host the Atlanta Hawks in a single-elimination game on Dec. 11. The Hawks went 3-1 in group play to win Eastern Conference Group C.

The Magic also advanced as the Eastern Conference’s wild-card team, setting up a knockout-round meeting with the Milwaukee Bucks, who went 4-0 in group play to win Eastern Conference Group B.

All five Knicks starters scored in double figures Tuesday, led by Karl-Anthony Towns, who had 23 points. Jalen Brunson added 21.

The Knicks shot 50.6% from the field and went 15 of 35 (42.9%) from 3-point range — an impressive feat against a Magic team that entered Tuesday allowing an NBA-low 102.3 points per game on 45.4% shooting.

And so their NBA Cup journey continues.

NBA commissioner Adam Silver introduced the NBA Cup, formerly known simply as the in-season tournament, last year in an effort to generate extra interest and competition during the regular season’s first half.

Adding to the spectacle are the special — and typically garish — courts used throughout the NBA for Cup games, like the bright orange one the Knicks and Magic played on Tuesday.

The tournament splits the NBA’s 30 teams into six different groups, with each team facing every other team in their group once during the group-play round. The team with the best group-play record in every group — along with one wild-card team from each conference — advances to the knockout round.

The Knicks entered Tuesday with a 3-0 record in NBA Cup games but still needed to beat the Magic, who were also 3-0, to advance out of Group A.

That’s because the Knicks’ point differential in their first three Cup games was +15, guaranteeing the Boston Celtics, who went 3-1 with +23 point differential in Group C, would hold the tiebreaker for the East’s wild-card spot if they finished with the same record.

The Magic, who entered Tuesday with a +60 point differential, needed to either win to clinch Group A or to lose by fewer than 37 points to advance as the East’s wild-card team. They trailed by as many as 37 points Tuesday before closing the gap against the Knicks.

Orlando’s +45 differential allowed it to advance as the wild-card team instead of Boston or the Detroit Pistons, who went 3-1 with a +7 differential.

Every NBA Cup contest except for the championship game counts toward a team’s regular-season record.

“Each team is different, and you try to use it whatever way you can,” Knicks head coach Tom Thibodeau said before Tuesday’s elimination game. “I think the big thing about our league is that they all count the same, so don’t get lost and get distracted with hoopla [like], ‘This is a big game. You should win that game.’ It doesn’t work that way. You have to get ready every night.”

The Knicks opened the NBA Cup with a 12-point victory over the 76ers in Philadelphia on Nov. 12, then beat the Nets by two points at home three days later and the Hornets by one point in Charlotte on Friday.

Every player on the team that wins the NBA Cup this year will earn $514,970, while those on the runner-up will receive $205,988. The players whose teams lose in the semifinal round are set to get $102,994, while those eliminated in the quarterfinal round will take home $51,497.

With the NBA’s minimum salary this year being less than $1.2 million, that money can make a difference for some players.

“It would mean a lot for us to get there and do all that,” Brunson said before Tuesday’s game. “You have guys on the team who may be on one-year contracts or two-ways or whatever, and you get to go out there and try to win for them, and it means a lot.”

The Los Angeles Lakers won the inaugural in-season tournament last December, defeating an upstart Indiana Pacers team that would go on to make the playoffs for the first time since 2020 and reach the Eastern Conference finals. The Knicks advanced to the East quarterfinals in last year’s in-season tournament and lost to the Bucks.

Pacers coach Rick Carlisle has said those in-season tournament games helped prepare his young roster for the actual NBA postseason.

“It definitely does prepare you,” Magic head coach Jamahl Mosley, who worked as an assistant under Carlisle in Dallas, said Tuesday.

“I think you have to balance the emotions behind it, because it takes a lot in the moment as a championship in the middle of a season, then you have to go on and continue to play more games.”

Thibodeau and Mosley agree the NBA Cup has been successful in accomplishing what it set out to do.

“I think for the fans, it’s great,” Thibodeau said. “I think it’s something they wanted to try. I think there’s interest in it. People seem to like the format of it, they like the courts, they like all that stuff, so I think it’s been positive.”