A game with major implications for the Western Conference playoff standings takes place on Thursday, April 10 between the Memphis Grizzlies and the Minnesota Timberwolves at FedExForum in Memphis, Tenn.
The game is scheduled to start at 9:30 p.m. EDT and will be broadcast on TNT and truTV. Fans looking to watch this NBA game can do so for free by using DirecTV Stream, which offers a free trial or with SlingTV, which doesn’t offer a free trial but has promotional offers available. Max has plans starting at just $9.99/month, and includes movies, original series and more.
These teams are separated by one game with Memphis sitting at 47-32 and Minnesota at 46-33. The Grizzlies are currently the six seed in the West, half a game ahead of the Golden State Warriors for the final automatic playoff berth. The Timberwolves are eighth, half a game behind the Warriors for a chance to host a play-in game.
The Grizzlies are not just looking to hold onto sixth, but they have shot to climb up to fourth in the West with the Denver Nuggets and LA Clippers tied at 48-32, just half a game ahead of Memphis. The Grizzlies have won three straight and take on Denver on Friday in the second half of a back-to-back before closing the season on Sunday against the 10th-place Dallas Mavericks.
The Timberwolves had won five straight before blowing a 24-point lead in the fourth quarter on Tuesday in a loss to the Milwaukee Bucks. Minnesota closes the season against the Brooklyn Nets on Friday and Utah Jazz on Sunday, so a win Thursday, despite the Grizzlies already having clinched the season series and a tiebreaker, could be the difference between being in the play-in or being in the four-five playoff matchup.
Who: Minnesota Timberwolves vs. Memphis Grizzlies
When: Thursday, April 10 at 9:30 p.m. EDT
Where: FedExForum in Memphis, Tenn.
Stream: Sling; DirecTV Stream; MAX
What is DirecTV Stream?
DirecTV Stream offers practically everything DirecTV provides, except for a remote and a streaming device to connect to your television. Sign up now and get three free months of premium channels including MAX, Paramount+ with SHOWTIME and Starz.
What is SlingTV?
SlingTV offers a variety of live programing ranging from news and sports and starting as low as $20 a month for your first month. Subscribers also get a month of DVR Plus free if they sign up now. Choose from a variety of sports packages without long-term contracts and with easy cancelation.
What is MAX?
MAX is a streaming service that combines the catalogues of HBO and the various channels that make up the Warner Bros. Discovery Networks like CNN, Discovery Channel and TLC. The service is also partnered with Bleacher Report to provide sports coverage for anything covered by Turner Sports such as the NBA on TNT, the NHL on TNT, college basketball games on TNT and TBS and the Unrivaled 3×3 basketball league. You can also bundle your MAX subscription with Disney+ and Hulu.
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NBA coaches react with dismay over Michael Malone’s firing, ‘the unfortunate part of the business’
By TIM REYNOLDS AP Basketball Writer
These are the coaches who won NBA championships in the last six years: Joe Mazzulla with Boston, Michael Malone with Denver, Steve Kerr with Golden State, Mike Budenholzer with Milwaukee, Frank Vogel with the Los Angeles Lakers and Nick Nurse with Toronto.
Mazzulla is still with Boston. Kerr is still with Golden State.
Everybody else got fired. They packed up their ring and left.
Malone became the latest name on that list Tuesday, when the Denver Nuggets — the 2023 NBA champions — fired him with three games left in the season, an unprecedented move for a postseason-bound team. And around the league, in the hours that followed, coaches reacted in basically the same stunned, surprised manners.
The Nuggets enter Wednesday holding the fifth spot in the Western Conference playoff chase.
“Just disappointment,” New York coach Tom Thibodeau said. “It’s the unfortunate part of the business. I’ve known Michael for decades. … Michael just did a phenomenal job there.”
Championships no longer guarantee job security. Same goes for individual awards. Mike Brown was the unanimous coach of the year in 2023; he got fired by Sacramento earlier this year. Phoenix’s Monty Williams and Memphis’ Taylor Jenkins were first and second in the coach of the year voting in 2022; they’ve both been fired now as well.
“I wake up every day saying this could be my last day,” Mazzulla said. “You have to have that type of perspective because it gives you gratitude and it keeps you hungry. You have to have a healthy balance if you want this for as long as you can. At the same time, you’re very much replaceable because that’s just how it works. Every day I remind myself of my own mortality.”
Indiana coach Rick Carlisle knows there’s not really any such thing as true job security for coaches. But he didn’t see the likes of Brown, Jenkins and Malone being let go this season.
“If anyone would’ve told me that any of these three guys would get let go during the season this year, I would’ve been shocked. … It’s disappointing,” said Carlisle, who doubles as president of the National Basketball Coaches Association. “It’s kind of numbing to be honest. But teams have the ability to do what they want and coaches have contracts. But these were head-scratchers.”
Jenkins was fired late last month with nine games left in Memphis’ season. Now Malone is out, with three games left in Denver’s season. Before this season, there had been one other instance in NBA history of a team changing coaches with less than 10 games left in a postseason-bound year — Larry Brown leaving New Jersey with six games left in 1982-83.
It’s now happened twice in the last two weeks.
“Between Taylor and between a guy like Mike Malone, they’ve done such a great job in their careers of building an identity,” Charlotte coach Charles Lee said. “I have a ton of respect for both guys.”
More than half of the current NBA coaches — 17 of the 30 — have been in their jobs for less than three years. And in the WNBA, eight of the current 13 coaches (in fairness, one is an expansion team) have had their job for less than one year; seven of the 13 have a career record of 0-0 going into this season, after simply massive amounts of turnover following last season.
“That’s a sobering reality of this profession,” Miami coach Erik Spoelstra said earlier this season when told he has the second-longest current tenure in the NBA behind only San Antonio’s Gregg Popovich.
Malone’s firing was the 302nd coaching change in the NBA since Popovich became coach in San Antonio in 1996. That means, on average, the other 29 teams in the league have all had more than 10 coaching changes in the Popovich era.
Milwaukee coach Doc Rivers — who has coached five different clubs — said Tuesday that he’s still fighting for what he thinks he’s owed on his contract from Philadelphia, which fired him two years ago. And he was livid over what happened to both Jenkins and Malone.
“It’s always, ‘Whose fault?’ and the first guy that gets blamed is the coach,” Rivers said. “It’s tough. We sign on for it. There’s a lot of other guys that will sign up for it as well. That doesn’t make it fair, and that doesn’t make it right. What happened in Memphis in my opinion was wrong. What happened today was wrong.”
Malone was the fourth-longest tenured coach in the NBA right now behind Popovich, Spoelstra and Kerr.
And it is puzzling to coaches: four of the last six championship-winning coaches, five of the last seven winners of the Coach of the Year award and seven of the last 11 coaches to take a team to the NBA Finals all have something in common.
They all got fired.
“In situations like this … you look and as a coach you understand the job that we’ve signed up for,” Orlando coach Jamahl Mosley said. “And that’s very apparent. We know what comes with the territory.”
Los Angeles Clippers coach Tyronn Lue — who won a title with Cleveland in 2016 and eventually got fired from there, too — half-seriously said coaches might want to stop winning awards.
“You see the trick now — don’t win coach of the year, don’t win a championship, because you’re going to get fired in two years. … The criteria for getting hired and fired, I don’t know what it is anymore,” Lue said.
And Kerr was even more succinct. Coaches are making more than ever, he noted, but billionaire owners have no problem paying off those contracts if they want to make a change.
“Doesn’t seem right, but this is the business we’re in,” Kerr said. “We’re all going to suffer a similar fate at some point. That’s kind of the way it is.”
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This story has been corrected to show Budenholzer’s title was with Milwaukee against Phoenix.
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AP Basketball Writer Brian Mahoney in New York and AP Sports Writers Steve Megargee in Milwaukee, Greg Beacham in Inglewood, California and David Brandt in Phoenix contributed to this report.
The Associated Press contributed to this article
