Going to Las Vegas for a second straight December, the Oklahoma City Thunder had a shorter trip compared to last year. They couldn’t cross off that item from their bucket list in their 111-109 loss to the San Antonio Spurs in the 2025 NBA Cup semifinals.
The Thunder had hoped to bring home the NBA Cup. They finished just shy of that last year when they lost to the Milwaukee Bucks in the 2024 NBA Cup finals. But Victor Wembanyama’s return from a calf strain ruined those plans as he was a plus-21 in 21 minutes off the bench.
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Most NBA fans know the NBA Cup winner gets a grand prize. The in-season tournament has given players some extra bulletin board material to go all out in early regular-season games. Most NBA fans don’t know that the semifinal losers also get some money.
The Thunder traveled back to OKC with some money in their pockets. They received $107K per player. For context, the NBA Cup winner sees each player get $531K. The runner-up will see $212K per player. And the quarterfinals losers get $54K per player.
The NBA Cup has been Adam Silver’s boldest idea yet. He continues to tweak the tournament. One future change will be that the semifinal games will be hosted by the higher seed. In that hypothetical, OKC would’ve hosted the Spurs and Houston Rockets the last two years.
This article originally appeared on OKC Thunder Wire: How much money did OKC Thunder players make from 2025 NBA Cup?