The Athletic NBA Daily
Are the NBA playoffs too physical? + Rockets even series with Warriors
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.
Full Episode
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.
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.
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