There are some former Golden Eagles trying to get into the eight team Western Conference bracket over the next few days.
Who’s ready for NBA Playoff Basketball??
Well, if not, you’ve got a little bit of time left, because the next few days are THE PLAY-IN TOURNAMENT, which is somehow not the Playoffs, but is also not the regular season, and also not the playoffs, at least in terms of tracking stats.
IN ANY CASE, that means it’s time to keep track of when the former Marquette players in The Association are in action, and as it happens, there’s three former Golden Eagles in action on Tuesday and Wednesday night as the multi-stage Play-In Tournament shakes out. The three guys in question are on three different teams, and YEP, that means that one is definitely getting eliminated right away. Given that the former MU star is likely to not play in that game…. Well, it’s not that much of a loss, I guess, huh?
Schedule Time!
Jimmy Butler — Golden State Warriors
If you wait to pay attention to the NBA until the playoffs start, then it’s probably coming as a bit of a surprise to you that Jimmy Butler is wearing Golden State Warriors blue and gold instead of Miami Heat black and red. Butler was acquired by the Warriors on February 6 as part of a five-way deal to facilitate the end of Miami having to deal with the headaches of Butler getting suspended repeatedly by the team because he no longer wanted to be on the Heat roster.
At a glance in terms of his traditional stats, not much about Butler’s output changed in the 30 games that he played for Golden State this season. He averaged 17.9 points, 5.5 rebounds, and 5.9 assists per game, which is pretty much what he was doing for the Heat. However, Golden State dropped to 25-26 on the day of the trade and have posted a record of 23-8 since they acquired Butler. Feels like that worked out pretty well!
It did not work out well enough to avoid the Play-In Tournament, as Golden State finished seventh in the Western Conference, landing one game behind Minnesota and tying with Memphis. Jimmy Butler and the Warriors will be facing that Memphis team in the 7/8 games, where the winner gets to be the #7 seed in the bracket and the loser has to go play the winner of Wednesday’s 9/10 game to figure out who’s going to be the #8 seed in the bracket.
While Golden State was winning seven of their last 10 games to just barely miss being the #6 seed, Memphis was doing the other thing. They’ve won just four of their last 10 games and the Grizzlies are just 4-5 since firing head coach Taylor Jenkins late in the season. Not quite the dead cat bounce that one might hope to get from that experience, but Jenkins was let go because Memphis wasn’t heading towards the 50+ win mark that they reached the last two seasons when Ja Morant was physically available for them. Oh, and speaking of Morant? He’s getting increasingly weirder about his fingerguns/other assorted weaponry celebrations, even after the league warned him about it seeing as, y’know, they had to suspend him because he was playing with real guns a little too much.
Advantage Golden State? I guess?
Memphis at Golden State
Date: Tuesday, April 15, 2025
Time: 9pm Central
Location: Chase Center, San Francisco, CA
Television: TNT
Jae Crowder — Sacramento Kings
Olivier-Maxence Prosper — Dallas Mavericks
The good news is that no matter what happens, one of these two teams will advance from Wednesday’s 9/10 seed game to play on Friday for the #8 seed in the Western Conference playoffs bracket.
The bad news is I’m nearly positive that we won’t see either of these guys on the court.
I know we won’t see OMax Prosper because the Dallas Mavericks announced that he was having season ending surgery on his wrist in the middle of March.
I’m fairly confident that we won’t see Jae Crowder because he’s played a total of 13 minutes across three games since Christmas. He was on the Kings’ injury report for a stretch there because of a back issue, but that hasn’t been the case since mid-March.
Dallas Mavericks at Sacramento Kings
Date: Wednesday, April 16, 2025
Time: 9pm Central
Location: Golden 1 Center, Sacramento, California
Television: ESPN
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