by What’s at stake for the Celtics entering the NBA Cup bracket final against the Bulls originally appeared on NBC Sports Boston
The Boston Celtics’ game against the Chicago Bulls on Friday isn’t just any late November road game against a sub-.500 team.
Celtics at Bulls (8 p.m. ET on NBC Sports Boston) marks Boston’s final game in the group stage of the 2024 NBA Cup, the league’s tournament of the season. And there’s a lot at stake for the Celtics, who need a win (and a little help) to advance to the quarterfinals.
We’ll see how the C’s can advance to the knockout stage, but first here’s a look at the updated Group C standings.
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Since the Atlanta Hawks beat the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday, the Celtics cannot win Group C. Atlanta beat Boston in their first group game to win the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Bulls need a win over the C’s to try to overtake the Hawks.
In addition to the group winners, one “wild card” team from each conference advances to the quarterfinals. The best tiebreaker for wild cards is point differential, so to win the wild card the Celtics would have to have a better point differential than any team in the Eastern Conference who also went 3-1 but did not win their group.
Since there will be more group games next Tuesday, the C’s don’t know the exact point differential needed to earn the wild card spot. So they’ll just have to run up the score against Chicago as much as possible on Friday night and hope for the best from the other group games on Friday and Tuesday.
UPDATE (10:40 p.m. ET): The Celtics beat the Bulls 138-129 on Friday night, giving them a 3-1 record and a +23 point differential in Group C. Here’s what needs to happen for Boston to secure the wild card spot in the East :
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The Orlando Magic defeated the New York Knicks in their final group play ET
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The Bucks beat the Pistons by at least six points OR Detroit beat Milwaukee by at least seven points.
Magic-Knicks and Bucks-Pistons are both scheduled for Tuesday, December 3. Essentially, C’s fans should hope for a Magic win and a double-digit Bucks-Pistons win either way.
