The Los Angeles Lakers’ NBA Cup Wild-Card Route Depends on Two Groups They Do Not Play In

The Emirates NBA Cup is the only thing on the NBA calendar with a table, and the table that decides whether the Los Angeles Lakers play in December is not entirely inside West Group C. Four of the Western Conference’s 30 group games have been played as of Nov. 5, 2026 — one in Group C, one in West Group B and two in West Group A. Here is the group both of this site’s teams share, recomputed from the box scores.

Team	Group record	Point differential (excl. OT)	Points for (excl. OT)	Games left
Golden State Warriors	1-0	+17	112	3
Los Angeles Lakers	0-1	−17	95	3
Portland Trail Blazers	0-0	0	0	4
Sacramento Kings	0-0	0	0	4
San Antonio Spurs	0-0	0	0	4

Both number columns exclude overtime, because a group game that goes to overtime counts as a point differential of zero for both teams rather than the final margin, and points scored in overtime do not count toward the points-for tiebreaker either. No Western group game has gone to overtime yet, so the differential column is currently just the margins. The Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings and San Antonio Spurs are listed alphabetically: at 0-0 with nothing played, no tiebreaker separates them.

Only One Team in the Western Conference Holds Second Place Outright

Three group winners per conference reach the knockout round, plus one wild card, which the league defines as the team with the best group-play record among those that finished second in their group. That makes second place in West Group C directly comparable with second place in West Group A and West Group B — a cross-group race, and the one part of the Cup that no result inside Group C can settle.

It also cannot be read yet, and the reason is worth saying plainly rather than dressing up: a 0-0 record outranks an 0-1 record.

Group	Second place as it stands	Group record	Point differential (excl. OT)
West Group A	Dallas Mavericks	1-0	+5
West Group B	Memphis Grizzlies, New Orleans Pelicans, Oklahoma City Thunder — tied	0-0	0
West Group C	Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs — tied	0-0	0

So the Los Angeles Lakers are not their group’s runner-up at all right now. They are fifth in it, behind three teams that have not played, and the Dallas Mavericks lead the wild-card race only by having played one game and won it. Anyone presenting that as a standing is presenting a sample of four games out of 30.

The Minnesota Timberwolves Have Banked the Largest Margin in the Conference

West Group A	Record	Diff. (excl. OT)	Points for	Left
Denver Nuggets	1-0	+7	127	3
Dallas Mavericks	1-0	+5	116	3
Utah Jazz	0-0	0	0	4
Houston Rockets	0-1	−5	111	3
Phoenix Suns	0-1	−7	120	3

West Group B	Record	Diff. (excl. OT)	Points for	Left
Minnesota Timberwolves	1-0	+26	127	3
Memphis Grizzlies	0-0	0	0	4
New Orleans Pelicans	0-0	0	0	4
Oklahoma City Thunder	0-0	0	0	4
Los Angeles Clippers	0-1	−26	101	3

Among runners-up tied on record the head-to-head tiebreaker is unavailable, because teams in different groups never meet in group play. That pushes point differential excluding overtime up to first separator, and on that measure the Minnesota Timberwolves’ 127-101 win over the Los Angeles Clippers is the single largest thing banked in the conference so far: +26, against the Golden State Warriors’ +17, the Denver Nuggets’ +7 and the Dallas Mavericks’ +5.

What follows is a scenario, not a prediction. The Oklahoma City Thunder are 0-0 with four games left and can still finish 4-0; the Minnesota Timberwolves visit them on Nov. 25. If those two finish 4-0 and 3-1 in that order, Minnesota becomes a 3-1 runner-up carrying a differential that a Group C runner-up could not match without a blowout of its own — and the Los Angeles Lakers start that argument at −17, having already spent the one game that caps them at 3-1.

Point Differential Cannot Tell You Which Group Is Strongest

Inside any group, differential sums to zero: every point one team banks, another loses. Group C’s +17 and −17 cancel, as do West Group A’s +7, −7, +5 and −5. “The strongest group” is not a column that can be read off these tables, whatever a bigger number next to a group leader suggests.

What the tables do say is how much of each group is spent. West Group A has two of its ten games played, West Group B and West Group C one each — which means 26 of the Western Conference’s 30 group games, and almost all of the differential that will decide a wild card, are still unbanked.

December Is Set Out, and Hosting Raises the Bar Again

The quarterfinals are Dec. 4 and 5 in team markets. The semifinals, Dec. 8 and 9, are at the higher seed’s home arena, which is new for 2026 after years of a neutral site, and the final is Dec. 11 at Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

The hosting rule raises the bar further. The two group winners with the best group-stage records host the quarterfinals in their own arenas — the better of them against the wild card, the other against the third group winner — so a Group C winner would need one of the conference’s two best group records to host at all.

On the four results in hand, the teams in position elsewhere in the West are the Denver Nuggets and Dallas Mavericks in Group A and the Minnesota Timberwolves in Group B. No quarterfinal opponent is named here, because the seeding turns on records that 26 unplayed games will set.

Nothing is clinched or eliminated anywhere in the conference: every one of the 15 Western teams can still reach 2-2 or better, because no team has more than one loss and none has fewer than three games left. The narrower point is the one the group table already forced — why the Los Angeles Lakers cannot win Group C by matching the Golden State Warriors after Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors erased a 25-point hole in the group opener. The wild card is the route that survives that, and it is the only one in the Cup that two groups of teams the Los Angeles Lakers never play can close for them.