And the grievance
 

The Latest on Wednesday’s final slate of NBA regular-season games (all times local):

3:10 a.m.

The NBA has released the first-round playoff schedule Brian Dawkins Jersey , and the reigning NBA champs will host the postseason opener.

Game 1 between Golden State and San Antonio opens the slate on Saturday at 3 p.m. Eastern – a somewhat unusual noon local time tip-off for the Warriors.

The Warriors-Spurs game will followed Saturday by three other openers – Washington-Toronto, Miami-Philadelphia and New Orleans-Portland.

On Sunday, the games are Milwaukee-Boston, Indiana-Cleveland, Utah-Oklahoma City and Minnesota-Houston.

Game 2s will be held Monday through Wednesday.

Game 3s start Thursday, and all Game 7s – if necessary – would be on April 28 and 29.

For those planning way ahead, the NBA Finals are set to begin on May 31.

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1:00 a.m.

The NBA playoff bracket is complete.

Portland beat Utah to grab the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, and that allowed the rest of the bracket to be filled in – finally. The Trail Blazers will play No. 6 New Orleans in the first round Kevin Johnson Jersey , and No. 4 Oklahoma City will have home-court advantage against the fifth-seeded Jazz.

The Jazz-Blazers game was the 1,230th and final regular-season matchup of the season. Every other game on Wednesday’s schedule was over before the final buzzer in Portland, meaning it took the entire schedule to determine the last two matchups in the West.

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11:55 p.m.

The first two of the four Western Conference first-round matchups have been set.

No. 1 Houston will play No. 8 Minnesota, and No. 2 Golden State (probably with no Stephen Curry) will play No. 7 San Antonio (probably with no Kawhi Leonard).

The Rockets swept four games from the Timberwolves, and the Warriors went 3-1 against the Spurs in the regular season.

The rest of the West bracket will be set based on the outcome of the Utah-Portland game. New Orleans will start on the road, regardless of the winner, and Oklahoma City – thanks to its wild 137-123 win over Memphis – could still get a top-four seed.

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10:50 p.m.

Minnesota is in the playoffs.

Jeff Teague’s jumper with just over a minute left in overtime put the Timberwolves ahead to stay, and Minnesota topped Denver 112-106 on Wednesday night to grab the final spot in the NBA playoffs.

The last West spot was the only one up for grabs on the season’s final night. It was the NBA’s first winner-gets-in Aaron Donald Jersey , loser-goes-home game since 1997.

Denver would have gone to the postseason with a win at Minnesota.

Minnesota is in the playoffs for the first time since 2004 – ending what was the longest active drought in the NBA

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10:40 p.m.

The East is set.

It took 82 games, the entire regular season and even an overtime in Miami to decide things, but the bracket for the Eastern Conference playoffs is filled.

No. 1 Toronto will play No. 8 Washington, No. 2 Boston will meet No. 7 Milwaukee, No. 3 Philadelphia draws No. 6 Miami and No. 4 Cleveland gets No. 5 Indiana.

All the Game 1s will be Saturday or Sunday, at the lower seed.

Indiana went 3-1 against the Cavaliers in the regular season. All the other first-round matchups are ones where the playoff foes split four meetings this season.

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10:15 p.m.

For the first time since 2001, Philadelphia is a top-three seed in the Eastern Conference playoffs.

For the first time since 2008, LeBron James is not.

The 76ers routed Milwaukee 130-95 on Wednesday night to wrap up the No. 3 seed on the East bracket Cole Beasley Jersey , and that meant No. 4 Cleveland will face No. 5 Indiana when the playoffs open this weekend.

Philadelphia’s 16-game winning streak is the longest to end a regular season in NBA history.

Philadelphia rolled from the start, taking a 46-18 lead after the first quarter. The 28-point margin tied for the sixth-largest in any quarter of 76ers history.

The only way Cleveland would have finished No. 3 was if it won and Philadelphia lost. But with the 76ers taking command so quickly and essentially locking Cleveland into No. 4 long before the final buzzers, James got most of Wednesday night off. He finished with 10 points in just over 10 minutes.

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9:40 p.m.

Russell Westbrook will average a triple-double for the second straight season.

The Oklahoma City guard came into Wednesday needing 16 rebounds against Memphis to average 10.0 boards this season – and got there in the third quarter of the Thunder’s game against the Grizzlies.

Westbrook has no issue outdueling teammates for rebounds, and grabbed 16 of the Thunder’s first 27 rebounds on Wednesday.

It’s only the third time in NBA history that someone has averaged a triple-double. Westbrook did it last year, and Oscar Robertson did it in 1961-62.

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9:30 p.m.

Houston Rockets forward Luc Mbah a Moute will likely miss at least the first round of the playoffs after dislocating his right shoulder in a meaningless game for the Western Conference leaders.

Coach Mike D’Antoni said Wednesday that Mbah a Moute will likely miss two to three weeks with the injury sustained against the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night.

Mbah a Moute missed 15 games in December and January after dislocating his right shoulder during a fall, and it happened again on a dunk in traffic at Staples Center.

Mbah a Moute is a key rotation player for the Rockets, who have the best record in the NBA. He averages 7.5 points and 3.0 rebounds per game off the bench.

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9 p.m.

The non-injury grievance filed by the NFL Players Association against the NFL over the league’s new anthem policy could result in an arbitrator rolling things back to the way they were before May. The discussions between the union and the league over the issue could lead to something even more significant: A permanent solution to the problem.

But here’s the problem with that: It should have happened two years ago.

The moment that Colin Kaepernick was spotted sitting during the anthem before a preseason game and the NFL acknowledged that the policy it created encouraged but didn’t require players to stand, the NFL should have engaged the NFLPA to come up with a new policy. But the NFL presumably didn’t want to have to make any concessions to fix the problem that it (i.e. Cameron Meredith Jersey , one of its lawyers) created by using the word “should” instead of “must” before “stand.”

If someone had had the foresight in August 2016 to realize how the situation could unravel for the league, the concession would have been made then. Because now the union is in position to leverage an even greater concession — especially if the grievance prevails.

And the grievance could prevail. The argument is that the right to protest existed (as created and reiterated by the league) before May, and that the league took that employee right away without engaging in bargaining.

Remember when a couple of reporters working for the NFL tried to call the new policy a “compromise“? Remember the reaction that there can be no “compromise” if the players are shut out of the process? The grievance, if successful, will force the league to make the compromise that didn’t happen in May, that should have happened in August 2016, and that needs to happen if the league wants to solve this problem once and for all.

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