With the start of the 2026-2027 NBA season drawing closer and closer, so is the start of the 2026 Emirates NBA Cup. Unfortunately for the Sacramento Kings, winning the tournament this year seems incredibly unlikely based on the teams in their group. Even picking up one win will be a miracle.
The NBA created the cup to give the first half of the season a bit more gravitas. After Christmas, there's All-Star Weekend, the trade deadline, and then the playoffs get underway. The in-season cup tournament was designed to give the pre-Christmas games similar urgency.
To the surprise of many, it actually worked. The Emirates Cup has actually been a lot of fun to watch, giving teams something else to shoot for. Last season, the Knicks won both the cup and the NBA Championship. They were the first team to do this in the same season, beating the Spurs for both.
The semi-finals and finals are held in Las Vegas. To get there, a team has to make their way out of their respective group. For the Kings, that means being the top team among the Blazers, Lakers, Warriors, and Spurs. The Clippers aren't part of that group, which is likely a scheduling issue.
Sacramento is unlikely to make it past group play
All four of the Kings' group play games happen in November, between the 6th and the 25th. The team from each of the six groups with the best record moves on to the next round. On top of that, one wildcard from each conference also makes it to that same round.
Either avenue requires a good record in the group play part of the tournament, which will be difficult for the Kings to achieve. They are going to have a rough time taking down three of those teams, with a win against the Blazers being Sacramento's best chance of not going zero and four.
The reality is that the cup is too early in the season for the Kings. They are going to need time to build any kind of rhythm with this steadily changing group. This is especially true for Darius Acuff Jr., who is going to need time and experience to become the point guard the Kings need him to be.
Anything is possible, but it's hard to see Sacramento making it past the group play round in this season's Emirates Cup. That being said, give them two or three seasons to keep working out the kinks of this rebuild roster, and it might just be a completely different story.
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