What’s at stake in Celtics-Bulls Group C final – 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 group stage game in the 2024 NBA Cup, the league’s regular season tournament. And the stakes are high for the Celtics, who need a win (and some help) to advance to the quarterfinals.

We’ll get into how the C’s can advance to the knockout stage, but first, here’s a look at the updated Group C standings.

Since the Atlanta Hawks defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers on Friday, the Celtics are unable to win Group C. Atlanta beat Boston in their group stage opener to earn the head-to-head tiebreaker. The Bulls need a win over the C’s to have a chance to overtake the Hawks.

In addition to the group winners, a “wild card” team from each conference advances to the quarterfinals. The top tiebreaker for wild cards is point differentialso to earn the wild card, the Celtics had to have a better point differential than every Eastern Conference team, which also went 3-1 but didn’t win its group.

With more group games next Tuesday, the C’s don’t know the exact point differential needed to clinch the wild card spot. So they will simply have to run up the score on 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 +23 point differential in Group C. Here’s what needs to happen for Boston to earn the East wild card spot:

• The Orlando Magic beat the New York Knicks in their group stage final AND
• The Milwaukee Bucks-Detroit Pistons group stage will be decided by seven points or more.

Magic-Knicks and Bucks-Pistons are both scheduled for Tuesday, December 3rd.