The Basketball Tournament is returning to Drexel with semifinals and $1 million, winner-take-all final

For the second consecutive summer, Drexel’s Daskalakis Athletic Center will host a basketball game with a winner-take-all prize of $1 million.

The Basketball Tournament’s semifinals and championship games will be back in Philadelphia in August, TBT announced Monday morning.

Team rosters are still coming together, but players with Philly connections — and even some rosters with strictly Philadelphia backgrounds — usually dot the tournament field. Last year, there was a Big 5 alumni team and another made up of ex-Temple players.

Rosters are made up of players who aren’t currently playing in the NBA, but last year’s 64-team tournament featured more than 70 players with NBA experience. Already slated to play in this year’s event are Montrezl Harrell, a former Sixer; Russ Smith; Eric Bledsoe; Willie Cauley-Stein; Jordan Bell; and others.

Tournament play begins July 19 in eight regions, including Pittsburgh, Indianapolis, Dayton, and Houston, and the semifinals and title games will be Aug. 2 and 4.

Last year, Heartfire, a team made up of a collective of TBT veterans, beat Bleed Green, a team representing the University of North Texas, in the title game.

The TBT is known as much for its $1 million prize as it is for how it ends its games. The tournament uses the Elam Ending, which goes like this: The game clock shuts off inside four minutes to play in the fourth quarter, and a target score is determined by adding eight points to the number of the leading team (or a game that’s tied). The first team to reach the target score wins. It eliminates finishing basketball games with relentless fouling and free throws.

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The event returned to Philadelphia — where it was founded — last year after a hiatus.

“We are excited to return to where TBT all started 11 years ago in Philadelphia,” TBT founder and CEO Jon Mugar said in a press release.

“We have set goals to utilize the DAC as a hub of entertainment and basketball in Philadelphia,” Drexel athletic director Maisha Kelly said. “Partnerships like this allow us to achieve them and to illuminate Drexel’s brand on a national stage.”

Fox Sports will televise the semifinal and championship games. Tickets are available at thetournament.com/tickets.