Heat begin play Friday for the NBA Cup vs. Wizards (also known as a regular-season game)

MIAMI – We have reached a moment that the NBA is casting as dynamic, different, paradigm altering.

“I’m looking at it as a regular game, another game,” Heat guard Tyler Herro said.

Or that.

With the arrival of the NBA’s inaugural In-Season Tournament, which for the Heat opens Friday at Kaseya Center against the Washington Wizards, the league is attempting with the NBA Cup to emulate the success of cup tournaments overseas, most notably soccer competitions.

There will be special courts for the games, uniform unveilings, a shiny trophy to the winner, a trip to Las Vegas for the four semifinalists, and, in an attempt to get players to push through the doldrums of the NBA regular season, $500,000 to each player on the championship team of the event.

The difference between the NBA’s entrance into the cup realm is that unlike the successful overseasons competitions, or even those involving Major League Soccer teams stateside, such as when Messi and Inter Miami CF won the Leagues Cup this summer, is that all but the championship game of the NBA In-Season Tournament will count as regular-season games.

Further, it remains unclear how motivating the player payoffs will be to the paying customer. Players on the runner-up team in the tournament each receive $200,000, with players of losing semifinal teams each receiving $100,000 and players on losing quarterfinal teams $50,000.

As a matter of perspective, Jimmy Butler, the Heat’s highest-paid player, earns the equivalent of $551,000 per regular-season game.

The format for the tournament is basic, six five-team groups, with all teams playing four designated games in pool play. The six group winners plus the top two wild-card teams advance to the quarterfinals. All other teams then are assigned two additional regular-season games to fill out their 82-game regular-season schedule.

Stage 1 Group Play: All 30 teams have been randomly drawn into groups of five within their conference based on win-loss records from the 2022-23 regular season. Each team will play four designated Group Play games – one game against each opponent in its group, with two games at home and two games on the road. Group Play games will take place on Tuesdays and Fridays in November (except for Election Day this coming Tuesday, when the league is idle). On those Tournament Nights, the only NBA games scheduled will be Group Play games.

Stage 2 Knockout Rounds: Eight teams (four per conference) will advance from Group Play into the Knockout Rounds. The advancing teams will be the six group winners and two wild cards (the team from each conference with the best record in Group Play games that finished second in its group). The Knockout Rounds will consist of single-elimination games in the quarterfinals (Dec. 4 and Dec. 5), semifinals (Dec. 7) and championship ( Dec. 9). The quarterfinals will be played in NBA team markets. The semifinals and championship game will take place at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, with the winner getting the NBA Cup.

Heat Group Play Schedule: Friday vs. Wizards; Nov. 14 at Hornets; Nov. 24 at Knicks; Nov. 26 vs. Bucks. Other games against those teams will not count in the In-Season Tournament standings.

Rules: This is where it gets somewhat interesting. Two of the primary tiebreakers are point differential in Tournament games and total points in Tournament games. In theory, that would have teams playing to the finish in lopsided games, to maximize such tiebreaker advantage.

Second-year Heat forward Nikola Jovic is particularly familiar with such Cup events during his tenure in Europe.

“Those are really big,” the Serbian big man said. “People really compete for that. It means a lot. But this is a little different.

“I hope it’s going to translate here. The only thing is, it’s going to feel like a regular-season game, it’s just going to have a different court and it’s going to be called something different.”

Jovic said it is easier to get into a cup mindset in Europe because such games do not come in the normal course of league play.

Friday’s game for the Heat comes when victory is more about salvaging the start of their season than some sort of standings within the standings.

“You don’t play as many games as you play there,” Jovic said of the European cups. “So you have days off and those are for the cups. So when you’re playing those, you don’t even think about the season. All you’re thinking about is the cup.”

As could be expected, those within the league have been encouraged to embrace the event.

Heat coach Erik Spoelstra pointed to previous doubts about the play-in round of the playoffs, a postseason avenue his team utilized to advance all the way to last season’s NBA Finals, and now might have to use again.

“I trust the process,” Spoelstra said. “This is something that they’ve been talking about for several years, so we’ve had time to think about it, debate it. The last time there was a move like this, it was the play-in. And I remember, it’s the whole idea of this and that. But I think it’s been really good for the league. I think it’s stepped up the level of competition, less teams are tanking. And, of course, we were a big beneficiary of that.

“So this, I think, you just give it a little bit of time and I think ultimately it would be a good thing for the league.”