Oklahoma City has a chance to secure its spot in Round 2. Cleveland and the Los Angeles Clippers can get to the doorstep of the second round. And the Houston-Golden State winner is going to have control of their matchup.
Saturday’s NBA games: Cavaliers-Heat, Thunder-Grizzlies, Nuggets-Clippers and Rockets-Warriors
Oklahoma City has a chance to secure its spot in Round 2. Cleveland and the Los Angeles Clippers can get to the doorstep of the second round. And the Houston-Golden State winner is going to have control of their matchup.
Those are the headlines going into a quadruple-header of NBA playoff games on Saturday: Oklahoma City can sweep its series with a win at Memphis, Cleveland can take a 3-0 lead over Miami, the Clippers will aim for a 3-1 edge when it plays host to Memphis and the nightcap is a Rockets-Warriors matchup in San Francisco with those teams tied at a game apiece.
And there are some injury worries, particularly for Memphis and Golden State. Grizzlies guard Ja Morant took a bad fall that knocked him out of Game 3 against Oklahoma City with a bruised hip - and helped contribute to the Thunder rallying from a 29-point deficit - while Warriors forward Jimmy Butler also is dealing with the aftereffects of a fall that knocked him out of Game 2 in Houston.
"I never want to see anybody get hurt. I hope he’s OK," Thunder coach Mark Daigneault said of Morant. "You want everybody to be at full strength. He’s a great competitor. He was playing great. Obviously, that had something to do with the game as well. It’d be wrong of me not to acknowledge that."