The Athletic NBA Daily
Are the NBA playoffs too physical? + Rockets even series with Warriors
Thu, 24 Apr 2025
Jalen Green scored 38 points in a bounce-back performance to lead the Rockets to a win in game 2 against the Warriors. Dave DuFour and Es Baraheni react to Jimmy Butler’s injury, the Cavs and Celtics wins, and the physicality of the NBA playoffs. Then, the Athletic’s Kelly Iko joins the show to discuss the Rockets win and Jalen Green’s huge performance.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Es Baraheni & Kelly IkoExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson Moodyhttps://www.nytimes.com/athletic/nba/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Chapter 1: What happened in the Warriors vs. Rockets game?
Good morning and welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, the Warriors lost a game and may have lost Jimmy Butler for game three. The Cavs and the Celtics have made it look easy so far. And S and I talk about all the physicality in the playoffs. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, S. Good morning. Kind of a bit of a bummer last night. Warriors Rockets.
Chapter 2: What is the latest update on Jimmy Butler's injury?
The Rockets get to win, which is, you know, it's not a bummer. The series is tied up one game apiece, you know, going back to the Bay. But late in the first quarter, Jimmy Butler took a hard spill. They diagnosed him in the back with a pelvic contusion, and he missed the rest of the game. S, is there any update on Jimmy Butler?
Yeah, so Anthony Slater mentioned that Jimmy's going to get a MRI tomorrow. He's actually flying back tonight, which is just showing the level of urgency here. The pelvic contusion, like you mentioned, assuming the x-rays were clean at that point. Steve Kerr also said that Jimmy always feels fine. So it's more about pain tolerance at this point and seeing if there's anything else.
But, I mean, we'll see, man. Jimmy, pelvic contusions for the Warriors. Are they contagious? Yeah, what a strange thing. Steph, Kaminga, and now Jimmy dealing with pelvic contusions. Just please wear those pads, you know?
I would call that that's an effort injury though. You know what I mean? Like this is, you know, he was going hard. I mean, uh, that kind of stuff happens. It was a nasty fall. Um, yeah.
And I, by the way, I've seen a lot of talk about like, it was that intentional. I, I, I've seen the replays. I don't think it was intentional at all. It was just hustle and physicality.
Right. We're going to go deep with Kelly Eco after the break on the rocket side of this. Jalen Green was awesome, especially as we called him out for the game one. We were saying, hey, this guy is like on some all NBA ballots. What's he going to do? And the way he bounced back, man, that's really impressive. Yeah, absolutely. Speaking of physicality.
The Cavs and Celtics, all right, they're facing a couple of teams that like to get physical. And part of that is because they're calling card is defense. They can't really score, especially compared to the Cavaliers and Celtics, two of the best offenses in basketball. What do you think about how the Miami Heat came out against the Cavs? They jump out to that lead.
They were trying to just, you know, hit them in the mouth and hope that they that they staggered. But I mean, the Cavs like kind of a machine.
Yeah, I mean, look, the Cavs in the first quarter scored 25 points. They scored 25 points in the first six minutes of the second quarter. That's the type of offense that this team can be like. They just exploded with their three-point shooting. They throw Ty Jerome out there, and for some reason, it's just like... It's jumpstart guys just get involved.
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Chapter 3: How do injuries affect playoff physicality?
I do feel like we've seen more chippiness though. I'm thinking obviously the Pacers and Bucks have a long history, but it does feel like any sort of, if a guy falls down, if there's a hard foul, all that type of stuff, they're immediately jumping out. There was a moment in this Magic Celtics game where Al Horford trips on Contavious Caldwell Pope and he just springs up. Al Horford, right?
Springs up. tries to chase after KCP. I mean, there's just a lot of these moments now.
We've begged for times like this, though. You're right. We've begged for times like this where these guys cared, where they weren't all buddy-buddy. You know, like, we've... The rivalries... Actually, that works well. The rivalries are back. These guys, there's on the court bad blood, which is great, I think, for the NBA.
Now, there is a finite amount of that that you can have before it does spill over. And you got to be careful. And we've seen that with the Rockets this year. We've seen that with the Pistons a couple of times. But we really did beg for this. And now that we've got it. I'm glad it's here. I do wish the officiating would just, you know, let's get it tighter.
I don't want these guys getting technicals down the stretch of games. Totally. I just think that it, you know, like.
I like that they had, you know, Draymond Green and Fred VanVleet, they had that moment where they were face-to-face. No techs, nothing.
No, no, no, no. They just gave Tari Eason tech. Tari Eason got a tech for throwing the towel, which, hey, you know what? Don't throw the towel. The Warriors were about to do that anyway. Like, you know, save yourself the technical and let them throw in the towel when they pull. Draymond out.
No, I agree with you. I don't think the physicality is the issue here. I think it comes down to how much are the officials going to allow it? Right. And where is that line to your point of, you know, what we're going to decide is physical versus what might end up in some sort of fight for altercation.
100%.
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Chapter 4: Are the NBA playoffs too physical?
The problem is it falls apart when it doesn't work. But look at his game. I mean, he has six assists, four rebounds, three steals, the two forced jump balls, and also was involved in so many of the traps and switches. I mean, this is the sort of thing that, you know, when you're thinking about a guy – Does he develop into the number one guy, like the guy?
I mean, how do you see what Jalen Green, you know, over the course of the season, not just tonight, because this guy had a really great year on a team that was a two seed in the West. What do you think about the way that like this season went for him? And how do you see his career? You know, what's the difference between like now and when we started the year?
I think the biggest thing now is trust, trust in the coaching staff, that renewed sense of communication and honesty between those guys and seeing the deficiencies in his game and where he needed to improve on defensively. Because, you know, early on when he first got to Houston, it was a common thing to take him out end of games whenever he needed to get a stop.
And as a player, your pride and ego is affected by that. That happens five, six, seven times because in this day and age, that becomes a label on you. So what Jalen did is have those hard talks with EMA, have those hard talks with Ben Sullivan, the coaching staff, and figure out exactly what he was doing wrong defensively. And now you're seeing his tendencies are improved.
His reaction time has improved. The overall IQ has improved. And because of his size and length and his speed, If he's able to lock in defensively, it really raises the ceiling more than anyone else on that roster because of what he can do offensively as well. Right. And given his I guess his ceiling, you know, as a potential, you know, a one guy.
These are the games that you have to show that your teammates can trust you in because this is the first time all of you are going to the playoffs as the young core. It's going to be a lot of information that's going to be carried over to the offices now will affect some of our decisions, future contracts, stuff like that. It starts now.
And credit to Jalen, he's put in the work behind the scenes to become – That dependable player, especially on the defensive end, he's worked hard to not be a liability on the end of the floor. And because of that, he's become a positive team defender. And as you saw in game two, when he's aggressive and he's spearheading that scheme, there's no telling what that team can do.
So I think to kind of forecast his projection, It's really hard to say because, you know, is this a one-off or is this, you know, going to be a big moment of consistency for me?
Was it a coming out party?
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Chapter 5: What role does officiating play in playoff physicality?
you know, it's obvious that Steve Kerr doesn't play him for certain reasons in terms of how he fits in with Jimmy and the other guys. And he's kind of like, Pat Spencer gave them more problems. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's, it's tough. Like when you have those kind of,
dark horse type players yeah it's really hard to scheme for them because you're not sure with this warriors team who's going to step up now if jimmy's not able to play game three who's going to be that next go-to guy is it going to be is it going to be pods is it going to be jk is it going to be buddy like who moses if he'll get the shots up right
I think if you were to look in the vacuum, it has to be Kuminga, but who knows to see how they actually scheme.
Look, he had a good season against the Rockets. He had some of his highest scoring output games against the Rockets. Physically, I think he matches up pretty well. We could go on and on and on. We've already hit this a dozen times. Kelly, thank you so much for hanging out. Look forward to seeing what you're writing ahead of Game 3. We'll see what happens. This series is so good. This is fun.
The physicality, I'm into it. That's going to do it for the show, folks. For Kelly Eco and Espera Henney, I'm Dave DeFore, and this has been the NBA Daily. Thanks for waking up with us.
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