NBA play-in to start with Warriors v. Grizzlies; Magic v. Hawks

Call it the playoffs before the playoffs. The NBA play-in tournament starts Tuesday night

and in its fifth year, it's become a permanent fixture of the NBA postseason

Why? Money. More teams mean more interest, more ticket sales, and more TV revenue

And as a seven seed, Steve Kerr, the head coach of the Golden State Warriors

he'd rather just be in the regular tournament, but... It is what it is. It's been great for the NBA, and it's exciting

It creates a race within the race. And so this is what it is, and we've got to go take care of it

The Warriors will try and take care of it Tuesday when they meet the Memphis Grizzlies

The winner makes it into the big tournament, and the loser has one more shot later in the week against the winner of the Kings-Mavericks game

As for the Grizzlies, they fired their coach with nine games left in the regular season

They went 4-5 with interim coach Tomas Isalo. The play-ins, the tough part about that is you don't get a second chance

You get one game, and then if you lose that, you have a second game

but you don get the same opponent twice so you want to make it count To make it count they have to deal not only with Steph Curry and Draymond Green but playoff Jimmy The Warriors made the blockbuster trade for Jimmy Butler at the deadline for just such an occasion

He's an alpha. He's out there, and he wants the ball, and he wants to get to the foul line

and you can just throw him the ball. You don't even have to run any offense

You just have to get spaced, and what a luxury that is. In the Eastern Conference Tuesday, it's a matchup between the Orlando Magic and the Atlanta Hawks

who split four meetings already this season. The winner advances to the big show

The loser will meet the winner of the Bulls and Heat game

Wendell Carter Jr. knows that defense, particularly against Trae Young, is the key to his team's season

No matter what happened in December, January, everybody's going to care about what happens in these last couple months of this season

or the postseason. So I understand that we've got to turn it up a notch

Turn it up a notch and get into the real playoffs. And from there, it's not impossible to make a run

Two years ago, the Miami Heat and playoff Jimmy went all the way to the NBA Finals

from the play-in tournament before losing to the Denver Nuggets. For Straight Hour News, I'm Chris Francis