Butler's Hinkle Fieldhouse to host this year's NBA Cup final - ESPN

The NBA is going back to college this coming season, bringing the NBA Cup championship game to Butler's historic Hinkle Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

Hinkle — one of the oldest arenas in the country — is iconic, and more than fits the billing that NBA commissioner Adam Silver and other league officials were looking for when he said the league was searching for «storied college arenas» to play host to the Cup final.

The 2026-27 title game, to be played Dec. 11, will mark the first time the Cup final is held outside of Las Vegas — which hosted the final for the first three in-season tournaments.

«Hinkle Fieldhouse offers a special setting to capture the excitement and drama of the Emirates NBA Cup Championship,» NBA Head of Global Events Kelly Flatow said. «Playing the championship in an iconic basketball environment like this will further establish it as a signature moment on the NBA calendar.»

The arena, which has about 9,100 seats, has played host to at least six U.S. presidents — Herbert Hoover, Dwight Eisenhower, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush — along with the first U.S. vs. Soviet Union basketball games, circuses, tennis matches, ice shows and even was used as a barracks for the U.S. military during World War II.

«Hinkle Fieldhouse gets loud,» Boston Celtics basketball operations president Brad Stevens said when he coached at Butler, «and it gets as loud as loud gets.»

Hinkle also was home of the famed Indiana high school basketball tournament for decades, including 1954 when tiny Milan High beat Muncie Central High to win the state title in the story that served as the inspiration for the classic basketball movie «Hoosiers» — which used Hinkle as the set for its championship game.

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