SI

Winners of NBA Summer League Receive Shockingly Big Prize

The NBA 2K26 Summer League championship will take place July 20 in Las Vegas.

Blake Silverman

The Miami Heat won the NBA Summer League championship last year
The Miami Heat won the NBA Summer League championship last year / Lucas Peltier-Imagn Images

NBA 2K26 Summer League is well underway in Las Vegas. The exhibition series gives a chance for the league's next stars wear their new colors for the first time, while other players compete for training camp invites and roster spots.

Although Summer League games are only exhibitions and don't count in any long-lasting record books, a champion still gets crowned at the end of the 11-day long hoops festival. Each summer squad in Vegas will play at least five games, with four initial contests set in stone on the schedule. The undecided fifth game is based on standings and results, where teams who excel have a chance to compete for the title.

Winning the title in Vegas is no easy feat, though, with very little room for error. After each team plays its first four games, the top-four squads move on into the semifinals. The semifinal winners then compete for the Summer League trophy the following day.

Each team that does not advance to the semifinals still gets a fifth game, they just play one of the other teams that didn't advance. Because only four teams move on, a laundry list of tiebreakers could come into play. Head-to-head record and point differential are at the top of the list, but there could even be a random drawing to determine who moves on if it comes down to it.

That's a lot just for some exhibitions, right? Although that may seem to be the case, the team who heads out of Vegas on top actually gets a pretty big prize.

What Do the Winners of NBA Summer League Get?

NBA Summer League has awarded championship rings to each member of the winning team since 2022. And they're pretty fancy, too. Take a look at the first Summer League championship rings issued:

And here are the rings that were issued in '23:

The Miami Heat won the title last year in Summer League's 20th anniversary and they walked away with this shiny hardware:

The ring design for this year's Summer League champion hasn't been released yet. But, if the past three years have been any indication, the winners are in for a keepsake to last a lifetime. The possibility for a championship ring in just six games? Not bad at all.

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Blake Silverman
BLAKE SILVERMAN

Blake Silverman is a contributor to the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in November 2024, he covered the WNBA, NBA, G League and college basketball for numerous sites, including Winsidr, SB Nation's Detroit Bad Boys and A10Talk. He graduated from Michigan State University before receiving a master's in sports journalism from St. Bonaventure University. Outside of work, he's probably binging the latest Netflix documentary, at a yoga studio or enjoying everything Detroit sports. A lifelong Michigander, he lives in suburban Detroit with his wife, young son and their personal petting zoo of two cats and a dog.

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