Warriors' simplest solution to avoid spiraling at worst time originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

MIAMI – The quickest solution to make sure the Warriors don’t spiral and fall to the NBA play-in tournament is obvious: Have a healthy Steph Curry.

That always has been the case, even in the past with Kevin Durant, Klay Thompson and any other star, and it remains the same with the addition of Jimmy Butler.

“We definitely need 30 back,” Butler said Tuesday night. “But we want him to be right. We’re still expected to win. We got to put out a better effort than we have the last two games. If he’s back, I think it’ll be different.”

Golden State dropped its second straight game without Curry as recovers from a pelvic contusion after taking a hard fall Saturday in the Warriors’ win against the Toronto Raptors. He’s considered day-to-day and is expected to play Friday in New Orleans against the Pelicans, barring any setbacks. 

The Warriors are playing a tough balancing act, knowing how badly they need Curry in a heated battle to remain as at least the No. 6 seed in the Western Conference, conversely knowing him being as close to full strength as possible for a playoff push is their only chance at making a real run at title contention. 

With or without him, there are glaring deficiencies that must be resolved immediately. 

Butler’s addition has made the Warriors a much better fourth-quarter team, giving them a closer they can rely on to shut the door alongside Curry. The start of games remains an issue, as seen in the Warriors’ last two losses. To start a six-game road trip, the Warriors looked like a team that traveled across the country and had to wipe off cobwebs, allowing 40 points to the Atlanta Hawks in the first quarter. Any motivation to play for Butler wasn’t enough medication to beat the South Beach flu, falling into a 17-point halftime deficit to the Miami Heat on Tuesday night. 

What needs to change couldn’t be more clear to Butler after having his first losing streak since joining the Warriors. 

“Probably the effort coming out of the jump,” Butler said. “We’ve got to guard a little better. Seems like as of late everyone’s been scoring at will at the rim, in the mid, at the three, getting to the free-throw line. We’ve gotten away from what got us a couple of wins.”

Over and over again, the Warriors have emphasized how every team gives them their best effort. These are still the Beatles. Fans still flock in droves, and teams still froth at taking down the Warriors with the national spotlight on them. Yet the light switch still feels stuck at tipoff. 

The Hawks and Heat, two teams with losing records to start this ever-important road trip, combined to shoot 56.4 percent from the field (92 of 163) and 52.5 percent from three (32 of 61). Role players like Alec Burks (17 points) and Georges Niang (23 points) went off against the Warriors, especially from behind the 3-point line. Miami made 17 of its 25 3-point attempts for a 68-percent clip, the highest the Warriors have allowed in a game since 2018.

Those are numbers and performances Draymond Green takes personally. 

“Get myself charged,” Green said in response to how the Warriors can be better defensively at the beginning of games. “Get myself charged, and lead by example as well. When I get myself charged up, everybody else will follow in line.” 

The conclusion of the road trip takes the Warriors to Memphis to play the Grizzlies, and then they’re off to Los Angeles for their final regular-season matchup with the Lakers before having to play the Denver Nuggets back at home on the second night of a back-to-back. In between, the Warriors still have games against the Pelicans and San Antonio Spurs. The first four games on the road were supposed to be the ones to take advantage of. 

They weren’t. A 4-2 road trip felt like a reasonable goal. Now 3-3 has to be a reasonable target that won’t be easy to reach. The easiest way to do so is by locking in defensively and not allowing the opposition to get comfortable from the jump. 

With 10 regular-season games remaining, the Warriors now are 12-23 when trailing after the first quarter and 13-26 when facing a halftime deficit. They’re 27-4 when leading after the first quarter, as well as when they have a halftime lead. 

Curry’s addition always collectively has the Warriors wearing Calvin Cambridge’s shoes. A wake-up call is in order either way, and the Warriors will have to prove what these two losses meant to them to get back on the right track with so much at stake. 

“Come out and play well,” Green says. “Lost two in a row, you don’t want it to spiral. It’s the wrong time to really let something spiral. Come out, take care of this, get this road trip moving in the right direction. We’re 0-2 to start this trip. We need to make sure we right the ship.”

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A simple plan to stop tanking in the NBA originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia

The bottom-tier teams in the NBA have more incentive to lose than to win late in the season. Here’s how to change it.

The Sixers and Pelicans played Monday night in a game where both fanbases were justified in hoping for a loss rather than a win. The Raptors and Wizards played under similar circumstances. That’s because the NBA draft lottery incentivizes the league’s bottom-feeders to lose rather than win as disappointing seasons wind down. 

Better to increase the odds of landing a potential superstar than worry about “meaningless” games down the stretch, right? Makes total sense in the current system, which is why the current system needs to change.

If you want to make sure that teams keep competing, you must take away any possible reward for losing games. 

Here’s a simple plan for how to do just that:

• A 30-pick draft lottery where every team who owns a first-round pick has the exact same odds for every pick. If this system were in place for the 2025 draft, the Thunder and Celtics would have the same chances at Cooper Flagg as the Wizards and Jazz.

• If a team has multiple first-round picks, it has more chances in that 30-pick lottery.

• The picks would be drawn in reverse order, just as the draft lottery works now. So, pick No. 30 would be drawn first, then pick No. 29, etc.

• Protected draft picks would convey in the same fashion they do now. If the 30-pick system were in place this year, here’s how the Sixers’  top-6 protected pick would work: It would go to Oklahoma City if the Sixers’ pick landed anywhere between picks No. 7 and 30. If it ended up in the top six, the Sixers would keep it.

Here are some of the benefits of a 30-pick draft lottery:

• There is no benefit to losing games. None. You have as much chance at getting the No. 1 pick if you have the best record as you do with the worst record.  We’d get more competitive rosters and more competitive games late in seasons because teams won’t have any incentive to lose.

• Ending up in the middle of the pack is no longer a franchise death sentence. The whole point of the Sixers’ “Process” was that a middling team would never get access to elite talent. Under the system that was in place, a mediocre team trading away its best players with the goal of finishing at the bottom of the standings was a completely reasonable strategy. But in a 30-pick lottery, that method of team building is no longer viable.

• It could be a lot more fun to see top rookie talent go to successful franchises rather than struggling ones. Was it bad for the NBA when Larry Bird and Magic Johnson went to the Celtics and Lakers? Personally, I think it would have been interesting to have Victor Wembanyama on a playoff team right away and see how that might have altered the landscape.

• The 30-pick lottery would be one of the most exciting nights on the NBA calendar. Imagine every fan tuning in knowing their team had a 1-in-30 chance of landing a talent like Flagg or Wembanyama. 

I’m already envisioning some of the counterarguments to a 30-pick lottery, so let me address a few of them:

Couldn’t this create a superteam?

Sure, it could. In a 30-pick lottery, the Thunder or Celtics could absolutely end up with Flagg. Totally plausible scenario. Is that bad for the league? That’s up for the fans to judge.

How will bad teams ever get better?

Bad teams will still have the same chance at getting the best rookie talent as any other team. It’s just no longer a guaranteed chance. Also, let’s examine the five players most likely to make the All-NBA first team this season:

• Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (11^th overall pick, acquired via trade)
• Donovan Mitchell (13^th overall pick, acquired via trade)
• Giannis Antetokounmpo (15^th overall pick, still with team that drafted him)
• Jayson Tatum (3^rd overall pick, chosen with pick acquired via trade)
• Nikola Jokic (41^st overall pick, still with team that drafted him)

You’ll notice that only one of these players was drafted in the top 10. The idea that hoarding top-10 picks is the only way to acquire elite talent is just not true.

Perhaps a few teams will still be perennial bottom-feeders through some combination of incompetence, injuries and bad luck. But at least they won’t be purposely trying to lose.

Won’t luck be too big a factor in acquiring elite talent?

Lottery luck would play a major role in the fortunes of franchises, no question. But teams get these picks wrong all the time anyway.

Jared McCain went 16^th overall last year and Tyrese Maxey went 21^st in 2020. We see some teams swing and miss in the top 10 and other teams find stars in the back end of the first round. At least in this system, we aren’t rewarding incompetence or strategic losing with top picks. Team executives will have to get more creative to find ways to improve. 

Brian Brennan is the producer of Sixers Pregame and Postgame Live for NBC Sports Philadelphia. He watches far too much basketball.

Why Marks was 'embarrassed' by Heat fans cheering Butler in return originally appeared on NBC Sports Bay Area

The vast majority of Heat fans gave Warriors forward Jimmy Butler a warm welcome back in his return to Miami on Tuesday night, something that didn’t sit right with ESPN’s Bobby Marks.

“I was embarrassed last night,” Marks said Wednesday morning on “Get Up.” “I was embarrassed watching that and looking at what the Heat fans did. To give a man who quit on you, he quit on them in the middle of the year because he didn’t get paid by the Miami Heat.

“I know he took you to two NBA Finals and everything he did great for you, but to give that man a standing ovation, even if it was 50 percent of that, that bothered me dearly.”

Bobby Marks slams Heat fans who cheered for Jimmy Butler last night

“I was embarrassed watching that and what the Heat fans did. To give a man who quit on you a standing ovation, that bothered me dearly”

(Via @GetUpESPN / h/t @HeatCulture13 )

pic.twitter.com/AGh3qUhZSS

— NBACentral (@TheDunkCentral) March 26, 2025

The Heat paid homage to their former star with a tribute video before he was introduced as a Warrior for the first time since the Feb. 5 blockbuster trade that shipped him from South Beach to Golden State to join forces with Steph Curry and Draymond Green.

This, of course, came weeks after tensions rose between Butler and the Heat organization, specifically with team president Pat Riley.

After the 40-second video montage played on the jumbotron inside Kaseya Center, Butler officially was introduced as fans rose to their feet with a mixture of cheers and boos.

Butler, who had made it clear there was no love lost for the fans and the city despite his relationship with Riley turning sour, embraced the crowd right back.

While the video tribute had been in the works for a while, per multiple reports, the reception by the crowd stunned Marks.

“I would’ve done the video tribute, I still would’ve done that if I was the Heat organization,” Marks said. “Steve Kerr said it afterward, he was like it’s almost like fair-weathered fans who are like, ‘Oh it’s OK. Yeah, I quit on you in the middle of the year. He went to Golden State. He got his money. And now this is what we’re left with.’

“And before tonight, the reality was the Miami Heat were a nondescript, vanilla team with no identity. And you saw Jimmy Butler finally bring out the identity whether that be with Bam Adebayo and Kel’el Ware. Two bigs. The ability to shoot the ball. They couldn’t make a basket in their last 10 games. And that just kind of hurt me last night.”

In the end, the Heat got the win in what long was expected to be an emotional night. Maybe now, everyone, including Marks, can move on.

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