{"id":708267,"date":"2026-04-11T15:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/708267\/"},"modified":"2026-04-11T15:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-11T15:39:20","slug":"nbas-friday-slate-sees-at-least-168-out-with-injury-or-illness-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/708267\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA’s Friday slate sees at least 168 out with injury or illness"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Oklahoma City<\/a>–Denver<\/a> game could have starred the NBA’s two most recent MVPs: the reigning one in Thunder guard Shai Gilgeous-Alexander<\/a> and a three-time winner in Nuggets forward Nikola Jokic<\/a>. Except they both sat out.<\/p>\n

They weren’t alone.<\/p>\n

All the other regular starters for the Thunder and Nuggets were ruled out too. And around the NBA, no fewer than 168 players — including 14 members of the Memphis Grizzlies<\/a> — were held out Friday night because of injury or illness.<\/p>\n

Every team was playing game 81 — the next-to-last game — of their seasons Friday night. They are all off Saturday and then play Sunday to close the regular season.<\/p>\n

Editor’s Picks<\/p>\n

2 Related<\/p>\n

Some teams had something to play for Friday. Some did not. Sometimes, that didn’t seem to matter.<\/p>\n

“If we didn’t clinch [the No. 1 overall seed] coming into tonight, everybody would be playing,” Thunder coach Mark Daigneault told reporters before the game. “We’ve earned the right through 80 games to manage their bodies and stuff like that.”<\/p>\n

Oklahoma City already had the No. 1 seed for the entirety of the postseason wrapped up, so rest and health appear to be the priority for the Thunder.<\/p>\n

The Nuggets entered Friday still having seeding to play for, and in Jokic’s case, there’s still award eligibility to obtain. He needs to play in one more game, so it would seem likely that the Nuggets will play him Sunday so he can get on the ballot for MVP, All-NBA and other awards.<\/p>\n

“We’re all aware of that,” Nuggets coach David Adelman told reporters before the game. Postgame, he said “an adult conversation” would be had Saturday about the best course of action.<\/p>\n

All the regular starters for the Thunder and Nuggets were held out of Friday’s game, a leaguewide trend that saw no fewer than 168 players sit out on the night because of injury or illness.\u00a0Matthew Stockman\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Some players got to award eligibility with a few extra minutes to spare.<\/p>\n

San Antonio<\/a>‘s Victor Wembanyama<\/a>, needing to play 20 minutes to reach the 65-game standard and be eligible for postseason awards, was taken out after hitting exactly that number of minutes — then went back into the game, evidently having convinced the Spurs that he needed a bit more on-court work.<\/p>\n

He finished with 40 points, 13 rebounds and five assists in 26 minutes during a 139-120 win<\/a> over the Dallas Mavericks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“If I had 65 [games] before, I for sure wouldn’t have played,” Wembanyama said.<\/p>\n

Said Spurs coach Mitch Johnson: “We need as much on-the-job training, on-the-court experience together as we can. That’s what we’re trying to do without overdoing it.”<\/p>\n

There was also a record shooting effort Friday. Boston made 29 3-pointers, tying the record<\/a> for 3s in a game. It was the fourth time in NBA history a team made 29 and the second time this week after the Memphis Grizzlies<\/a> did it Monday in a loss to the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“Hopefully, we didn’t use them all up in one game,” Celtics coach Joe Mazzulla said.<\/p>\n

Play-in dress rehearsal for Warriors? <\/p>\n

Not everybody was resting for the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Golden State was building for the postseason — or at least what it hopes will be a playoff run. The Warriors are going to the play-in tournament and tuned up by getting Stephen Curry<\/a>, Draymond Green<\/a> and Kristaps Porzingis<\/a> in the starting lineup together for the first time this season.<\/p>\n

“We’ll just take a look at that tonight,” Warriors coach Steve Kerr said. “We have a season full of data and film on some of the combinations. But some of the decisions we have to make, there’s no data. It’s just kind of a hunch, so we have to give some of that a look tonight.”<\/p>\n

Jazz, Grizzlies combine to use 13 players<\/p>\n

The Utah Jazz<\/a> used seven players in its 147-101 win<\/a> over the Grizzlies — and was the deeper team. Memphis had only six players.<\/p>\n

It wasn’t the game of the year, to put it mildly.<\/p>\n

“Congrats to the Jazz,” Memphis coach Tuomas Iisalo said. “They played a really good game. Shot the ball really well. We knew we had limited bodies going into this game. Guys gave everything they had, but you could see they were extremely fatigued.”<\/p>\n

Jazz coach Will Hardy called the game a great way to end Utah’s home schedule.<\/p>\n

“Just a fun night,” Hardy said.<\/p>\n

Playoff picture becomes clearer <\/p>\n

The Atlanta Hawks<\/a> became the 11th team to grab one of the 12 guaranteed playoff spots, rolling past a Cleveland team that sat Donovan Mitchell<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“It feels great,” guard CJ McCollum<\/a> said after the Hawks clinched either the No. 5 or No. 6 seed spot in the East. “The guys did a great job of rallying together.”<\/p>\n

In other playoff-related news:<\/p>\n

\u2022 Boston secured the No. 2 seed in the East, behind No. 1 seed Detroit<\/a> (which had previously clinched).<\/p>\n

\u2022 New York<\/a> locked up the No. 3 seed in the East.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Cleveland is certain to be the No. 4 seed in the East after that loss to the Hawks.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Charlotte<\/a> will be in the play-in tournament after falling to Detroit.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Orlando<\/a> will be in no worse than the 7-vs.-8 play-in game in the East.<\/p>\n

\u2022 Miami<\/a> is locked into the 9-vs.-10 play-in game in the East.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Oklahoma City–Denver game could have starred the NBA’s two most recent MVPs: the reigning one in Thunder…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":708199,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3795],"tags":[7,294,293,177,4070,6],"class_list":{"0":"post-708267","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-memphis-grizzlies","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-grizzlies","10":"tag-memphis","11":"tag-memphis-grizzlies","12":"tag-memphisgrizzlies","13":"tag-nba"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116386828305416115","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708267","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=708267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/708267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/708199"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=708267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=708267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=708267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}