Jimmy Butler connected on all 11 of his free throws to lead the Golden State Warriors to a win over the Milwaukee Bucks in spite Steph Curry’s absence. Dave DuFour and Zena Keita discuss the Warriors win, the Bucks issues scoring, and Kawhi Leonard’s performance in the Clippers win over the Cavaliers. Then, the Athletic’s Shakeia Taylor joins the show to go deep on NBA referees, the sports referee crisis, and how the league’s rules are interpreted.Host: Dave DuFourWith: Zena Keita & Shakeia TaylorExecutive Producer: Andrew SchlechtAudio Producer: Grayson MoodyRead Shakeia Taylor on referees: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6197306/2025/03/17/nba-refs-referees-officials-officiating-basketball/ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Full Episode
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the NBA Daily. Coming up, the Warriors won a game without Steph Curry. What? The Clippers beat the Cavs. And Shakia Taylor stops by to talk about referees and the referee crisis in America. Good morning, everybody. Good morning, Zena. I don't know if I could have sounded more serious in that rundown, the referee crisis in America.
But anyway, we had a great conversation with Shakia Taylor from The Athletic. She wrote an interesting story about how the NBA is training referees or not training referees. So we talked to her after the break. I hope you guys really enjoy it. Zena. Not a lot of games last night, but there were some really important games, at least for the teams that got wins. Steph Curry, apparently exhausted.
gets the night off, and I'm thinking to myself, and I text you, oh, Steph's out. Okay, so the Bucs are just going to roll. And what do you know? Another night where the Warriors surprise us. They surprise us by not showing up when Jokic and Jamal Murray weren't out there, and they lose to the Nuggets.
Right, that's true.
And then they surprise us by showing up when Steph Curry isn't out there and they beat the Bucs. I mean, and honestly, they handled them the entire game. You know, it felt like they controlled the entire game. And I really don't know where you hang the credit for this because it was such a weird performance.
I would say they handled them the entire game except for that 10 turnover third quarter where things went awry for the Warriors. It was very strange. It's hilarious. It's almost as if, Dave, you were not with me in that conversation with Eric Name just very recently about the Bucs and how much you cannot trust particularly
their offense and also like their desperation defense the Bucks got within three after being significantly down earlier in the game got within three in the third quarter uh and flipped the game pretty much on its head got the lead and you see their defense pick up a little bit you see Jay Lillard chasing down folks on screens switching people off I mean it was amazing And then it went away.
It was as if it just like they're like, oh, this is enough. We'll keep our three point lead. And of course, in the fourth quarter, the Warriors remembered we're at chase. We know how to hit threes in this arena. Let's go ahead and do that as a team and came back and just obliterated.
The Bucs defense, it was a night and day performance from what the Warriors looked like against Denver in terms of being able to have their offense be led by their defense. They kept the Bucs to under 40% from the floor. Big difference. Big shout out to Draymond Green for making life hell for Giannis Antetokounmpo, who finished 5-16 from the floor.
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