The Emirates NBA Cup has given the NBA season a spark that it desperately needed, as many fans complained that the players were not taking the regular season seriously. Fans enjoy the extra competition it brings, and the players generally seem to like the addition to the season.
The NBA started its in-season basketball tournament during the 2023-24 season. This was something NBA commissioner Adam Silver said the league was thinking about adding for a while.
“This is a concept that has been rumbling around the league office for around 15 years,” Silver said. “We thought what a perfect opportunity for a global league like the NBA, and it’s a perfect fit for our game.
“New traditions take time. But, all throughout sports, we are seeing new innovations, and now is the time for this NBA in-season tournament.”
After just three seasons of having the NBA Cup as part of the season routine, it has become a new tradition loved by most fans.
In the Cup’s first year, the Los Angeles Lakers, led by LeBron James, won the inaugural 2023 tournament. In the next season, the 2024 trophy was won by the Milwaukee Bucks.
This past season we saw something that had not been achieved. The New York Knicks ended up winning both the NBA Cup and the NBA championship. What makes it even more unique was the fact that New York defeated the San Antonio Spurs in both the Cup Championship and the NBA Finals.
The winners of the NBA Cup earn the Cup trophy, as well as a cash prize of $530,933 per player who is on a standard contract. This certainly has earned the players’ attention.
In the upcoming 2026-27 NBA season, the NBA Cup Championship game will be played in a historic and special Indiana arena that helped inspire one of the greatest basketball and sports movies of all time.
Hoosiers Cup Championship
The NBA has announced that this upcoming season’s NBA Cup Championship game will be held in Butler University’s Hinkle Fieldhouse, which is in Indianapolis, Indiana.
“Hinkle Fieldhouse offers a special setting to capture the excitement and drama of the Emirates NBA Cup Championship,” the league’s head of global events, Kelly Flatow, said. “Playing the championship in an iconic basketball environment like this will further establish it as a signature moment on the NBA calendar.”
This arena has an incredible history tied to it due to an incredible high school basketball moment and a Hollywood movie that touched us all.
Milan Miracle
In 1954, the Indiana high school state championship game was played at Hinkle Fieldhouse, which was known as Butler Fieldhouse at the time. It featured Milan High School, a small high school in a rural town in southern Indiana, playing the much bigger Muncie Central Bearcats.
What made this matchup special was the complete difference in the two high schools. At this time, the state did not divide teams up by classes, as they do now.
So, when Muncie Central High School, which had 1,662 students, met Milan, which boasted just 161 students, it caught everyone’s attention in Indiana. Most believed the bigger Muncie school basketball team would have an easy time with the Milan school, but they were wrong.
The game was a defensive masterclass, as both teams found it hard to score the ball. Ultimately, the two teams found themselves tied at 30-30 with four minutes left in the game.
This was where Bobby Plump held the ball for four minutes, letting the clock tick down. Up to that point in the game, Plump had shot just 2-10 from the field, but that did not faze him.
Plump tossed up a 14-foot jumper that hit the bottom of the net. The game and championship were won by the smaller high school, 32-30, and it was perfectly dubbed the “Milan Miracle.” No school as small as Milan High School had ever won the state title before that game.
“I knew it was going in the basket when it left my hands,” Plump said years later.
He also added, “To say that it changed my life is a little bit of an understatement. It absolutely was an earthquake that changed my life.”
Milan finished the season with a 28-2 record and was inducted into the Indiana Basketball Hall of Fame in 2004.
After the championship game, Cyril “Cy” Birge, who was one of the referees, had no idea how significant the game he was a part of was.
“When the game was over, of course, we went straight to our dressing room, which was underneath Butler Fieldhouse (now Hinkle Fieldhouse),” Birge said. “We could hear them celebrating up above. We knew a big school got beat by a small school, but we did not think anything of it.
“That happens every once in a while. We just got dressed and went home. Then later on it mushroomed. People still talk about it yet, and how many years has it been?”
Hoosiers
This incredible game inspired the 1986 sports classic Hoosiers, starring Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper. The movie did make some changes, like changing Milan High School to the fictional Hickory High School.
The movie also changed Plump’s character to Jimmy Chitwood, making him the hero of the game. Still, the movie was inspired by the real basketball classic, and the movie was also filmed in Hinkle Fieldhouse.
The movie earned two Oscar nominations, which were Best Supporting Actor for Dennis Hopper and Best Original Score for Jerry Goldsmith. Despite not winning, the movie has gone down as an all-time classic and inspired many other sports movie classics like Coach Carter, Glory Road, and Remember the Titans.
The 1954 championship game certainly was the most famous moment ever held in Butler University’s Hinkle Fieldhouse. However, the following year’s championship game is a close second.
In 1955, the same small basketball arena saw future NBA legend Oscar Robertson lead Crispus Attucks High School to the state title, defeating the Gary Roosevelt Panthers 97-74. Crispus Attucks became the first all-Black state champions in the state’s history.
Hinkle Fieldhouse also was the home of the first NBA team from Indiana. That was the Indianapolis Olympians, who played from 1949 to 1953.
Fast forward to 2026, the NBA is bringing its in-season championship to Indiana, and more importantly to Hinkle Fieldhouse. Will the NBA Cup Championship see a miracle happen?
