On Friday, the Boston Celtics will begin their run in the NBA Cup, which is the league's in-season tournament.

Boston will play against the Chicago Bulls at TD Garden, and you'll notice a new court for the event, as flashy designs are a staple of the tournament, now in its fourth season.

On Thursday, we gave you a lot of what you needed to know about the event, but there was something else interesting, courtesy of Tim Reynolds of the Associated Press.

As noted by Reynolds, teams that go 4-0 in Group Play are a perfect 10/10 in terms of advancing the elimination round. That sounds understandable.

He adds that going 3-1 has advanced 14-of-22 teams in the past three events (64 percent). No team that has ever gone 2-2, 1-3 or 0-4 has advanced to the elimination round, showing just how important it is to have a near-flawless performance in this stage.

1) The 30 NBA teams have been split up into six groups of five. Three groups make up each conference. So, 15 teams are in the Western Conference side of things and 15 in the East.

2) The Celtics are in Eastern Conference Group C with the Bulls, Atlanta Hawks, Washington Wizards, and Charlotte Hornets. The Celtics will play each of these four opponents.

3) These games happen on different dates throughout October and November until we get to the elimination round in early December. The championship game is Dec. 11. My biggest complaint about the NBA Cup is the disjointed nature of the schedule. Because it's interwoven with the regular league schedule, it's hard to delineate a cup game from a regular season game.

4) Two of these four Group Play games will be played at home, and two will be played on the road.

5) All of these games count toward the regular season standings, except the NBA Cup championship. That's because the teams who play in that game are playing an extra 83rd game.

6) Eight teams will advance to the elimination round. The top teams from each group make up six of the teams, plus two wild cards, one from each conference. That's why even going 3-1 isn't guaranteed to advance you to the knockout round. Multiple teams could be 3-1 and you could lose out on tiebreakers.

7) If a team does not advance to the elimination round, they will play two NBA Cup teams that also failed to advance, which helps make up the full schedule for the season.

The Celtics just played the Bulls on Monday night and won by a lopsided margin of 134-99. Boston is 3-1 on the season after just beating Brooklyn on Tuesday.