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Sixers will open group play in the NBA Cup against the Knicks on Nov. 12

The two squads are paired with the Nets, Magic, and Hornets in East Group A for the second annual in-season tournament.

Joel Embiid and the Sixers will open the NBA Cup against the team that eliminated them from last season's playoffs.
Joel Embiid and the Sixers will open the NBA Cup against the team that eliminated them from last season's playoffs.Read moreYong Kim / Staff Photographer

The NBA schedule is slowly being revealed.

We learned Thursday that the 76ers will face the Boston Celtics on Christmas Day at TD Garden. Then we learned Monday that they’ll open the season on Oct. 23 against the Milwaukee Bucks at the Wells Fargo Center. And on Tuesday the league revealed the preliminary-round portion of the schedule for the in-season tournament, the NBA Cup.

The Sixers will play the New York Knicks at 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12 at the Wells Fargo Center. They’ll then face the Orlando Magic on Nov. 15 at the Kia Center. The Sixers will host the Brooklyn Nets on Nov. 22 before traveling to the Spectrum Center to face the Charlotte Hornets on Dec. 3 to close group play.

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The Sixers-Knicks game will be a rematch of last season’s Eastern Conference first-round playoff series, which New York won in six games.

The squads are paired with the Nets, Magic, and Hornets in East Group A for the second annual in-season tournament. The 30 teams were randomly drawn into six groups of five within their conferences based on last season’s win-loss records.

The Los Angeles Lakers beat the Indiana Pacers, 123-109, to win the inaugural in-season tournament last season.

The Sixers, Magic, and Pacers finished the regular season with 47-35 records. However, after tiebreakers, the Magic stood fifth, the Pacers sixth, and the Sixers seventh.

The Knicks (50-32) had the conference’s second-best record. The Nets (32-50) and Hornets (21-61) were among the league’s worst teams.

The tournament will tip off on Nov. 12 in team markets and culminate in Las Vegas, with the semifinals scheduled for Dec. 14 and the championship three days later.

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Like last season, the two-month tournament will consist of group play and knockout rounds, similar to soccer’s World Cup. The winners of the six groups and two wild-card teams will advance to the single-elimination knockout round.

The quarterfinals will be played in team markets on Dec. 10 and 11 before the tourney moves to Vegas.