The NBA re-branded the In-Season Tournament for the 2024-25 season by calling it the Emirates NBA Cup, but the structure of the tournament remains largely the same from its inaugural campaign.

The league held its pool play drawing Friday night in Las Vegas, with the Milwaukee Bucks drawing the Indiana Pacers, Miami Heat, Toronto Raptors and Detroit Pistons in East Group B.

The Bucks will host the Pacers and Raptors and travel to play the Heat and Pistons.

Milwaukee won its group last year by going 4-0 and earning an extra home game at Fiserv Forum, so they are the No. 1 seed in this year’s group. The Bucks beat New York in quarterfinal play and then advanced to the semifinals in Las Vegas where they were eliminated by Indiana.

The Los Angeles Lakers won the initial in-season tournament by beating the Pacers under former head coach Darvin Ham, who is now an assistant coach with the Bucks under Doc Rivers. The trophy remains named the NBA Cup.

More: Tyrese Haliburton, Pacers outlast Bucks 128-119 in In-Season Tournament semifinal

How were the groups determined?

The random draw was divided by conference and based on won-loss records from the 2023-24 regular season and each team will play two home and road games.

As for how the teams were put together, the NBA explained “each team was placed into a 'pot' based on its record from the prior regular season. In each conference, one team from each pot was randomly selected into each of the three groups in that conference. Pot 1 had the teams with the three best prior-season records in a conference, Pot 2 had the teams with the fourth- through sixth-best prior-season records in a conference, and so on through Pot 5.”

What is the Cup schedule?

All teams will once again play on designated nights for the in-season tournament games:

• Tuesday, Nov. 12

• Friday, Nov. 15

• Tuesday, Nov. 19

• Friday, Nov. 22

• Tuesday, Nov. 26

• Friday, Nov. 29

• Tuesday, Dec. 3

The quarterfinal games will remain in the home markets on Dec. 10 and Dec. 11 with the semifinals and championship game (which does not count in the regular season standings) on Dec. 14 and Dec. 17. The most notable change in this schedule is that teams have more days between the quarterfinal and semifinal to rest and get to Las Vegas, and there is an additional day in Las Vegas before the final.

Teams that do not advance to the quarterfinal round and beyond will have regular season games scheduled later.

What is the Emirates Cup?

Formerly the In-Season Tournament, the Cup is a device created by the league in 2023-24 to increase competition in the early part of the regular season. Last year, each player on the winning team received lump sum of $500,000. The second-place team received $200,000 apiece. Semifinalist players got $100,000, while quarterfinalists got $50,000.

The teams also played on special courts and wore alternate jerseys on those game nights.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Milwaukee Bucks get top East rivals in Emirates Cup pool play draw