NBA Cup Final Leaves Vegas for Butler's Hinkle
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- The NBA will hold its 2026-27 Emirates NBA Cup championship at Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis on Dec. 11 — the first final held outside Las Vegas after the in-season tournament debuted there in 2023.
- NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said the league sought "storied college arenas" for the Cup final; Kelly Flatow, the NBA's Head of Global Events, called Hinkle a "special setting" aimed at establishing the event as a signature moment on the league calendar.
- Hinkle Fieldhouse, one of the oldest arenas in the country with about 9,100 seats, has hosted six U.S. presidents, the first U.S. vs. Soviet Union basketball games, and served as a U.S. military barracks during World War II.
- Hinkle was the site of the famed 1954 Indiana state tournament where tiny Milan High beat Muncie Central — the story that inspired the movie "Hoosiers," which used Hinkle as its championship set.
- Oscar Robertson led Crispus Attucks High to Indiana state titles at Hinkle in 1955 and 1956; Brad Stevens, now Celtics basketball operations president but formerly Butler's coach, said Hinkle "gets as loud as loud gets."
- The Knicks won the 2025 NBA Cup over San Antonio — a matchup that has now repeated in this season's NBA Finals.
Why it matters: After three years in Las Vegas, the NBA is moving the Cup final to a 9,100-seat venue roughly a third the size of a typical NBA arena — a deliberate trade of scale for atmosphere, per Flatow's stated goal of establishing the final as "a signature moment on the NBA calendar" rather than a Strip attraction.
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