K.C. Johnson of the Chicago Tribune: Jimmy Butler's illness forced him to miss Tuesday night's 113-111 victory in overtime against the Warriors, preventing the preferred and anticipated battle of the backcourts. For the Warriors, Stephen Curry is a leading most valuable player candidate and Klay Thompson wrote history with his 37-point quarter last week. As for the Bulls, who began a six-game trip, Butler, who missed his fourth game, will learn whether he makes his first All-Star Game on Thursday, while some very encouraging signs are developing for Derrick Rose. The biggest, of course, is that Rose has played in 14 of 15 games in January. This is the stringing games together path that coach Tom Thibodeau has hoped for all season. In fact, Rose has missed just three games since Nov. 24. Rose also is enjoying his best month statistically. He entered Tuesday averaging 19.6 points and 5.2 assists in January, including 39.4 percent 3-point shooting after a horrible start from that range. "I'm finally catching a better rhythm, getting in better condition," Rose said. "My game is coming back slowly."

Ronald Tillery of The Commercial-Appeal: About an hour before tipoff, Mike Conley pulled his arm out of a therapeutic sleeve to reveal a painful, red knot on his left wrist. The sprain won’t allow him to dribble, pass, shoot or play defense with any proficiency so the Grizzlies’ starting point guard missed work Tuesday night. His teammates more than picked up the slack throughout a 109-90 victory over the Dallas Mavericks in American Airlines Center. Memphis’ deft shooting and offensive execution made Dallas’ defense look porous all night. The Griz were just the opposite defensively, given their aggressive close outs on shooters and the deflections that led to turnovers. The Mavs were held to nearly 18 points below their average. “I thought we were sharp,” Griz coach Dave Joerger said. “For the second game of a back-to-back, I thought we played with a lot of force. … We played really hard and I was very impressed.”

Jorge Castillo of The Washington Post: On what would have been former Los Angeles Lakers owner Dr. Jerry Buss’s 82nd birthday, a motley crew of journeymen, long-term projects and placeholders — an ensemble unworthy of the Showtime glitz Buss created in his three decades running basketball’s premier franchise — took the Staples Center floor to play the Washington Wizards on Tuesday night. The Lakers were without Kobe Bryant, their aged scorer who will likely miss the rest of the season because of a torn rotator cuff. They were without Nick Young, their eccentric scorer who could miss a few games because of a sprained ankle. They were beyond shorthanded. They were losers of eight straight games and in all-out tank mode. The Wizards were there recently, in the cellar tallying losses. They are now contenders that must avoid letdowns against teams of the Lakers’ ilk, but Coach Randy Wittman emphasized they were not good enough to take any team lightly. For two quarters of their 98-92 win, however, the Wizards lacked their usual tenacity. They were a step slower and sloppier, and the Lakers, undermanned and all, capitalized. Then in the third quarter the teams reverted to their expected roles.

Charles F. Gardner of the Journal Sentinel: This all-star gig is nothing new for Dwyane Wade. The Miami Heat guard is a 10-time all-star and nine-time starter in the NBA All-Star Game. But the former Marquette player still remembers what it was like to reach that elite company for the first time. It's the situation Milwaukee Bucks point guard Brandon Knight finds himself in, waiting to see if he can break through when the all-star reserves are announced Thursday. Strangely, Knight might have to beat out Wade and/or Cleveland's Kyrie Irving to land a berth on the Eastern Conference squad for the All-Star Game, scheduled Feb. 15 at Madison Square Garden in New York. Wade ranked in the top two in fan voting until being overtaken by Toronto's Kyle Lowry, who earned an East backcourt starting spot along with Washington's John Wall. The 14 all-star reserves, selected by Eastern Conference and Western Conference head coaches, will be revealed on TNT at 6 p.m. Thursday. "When it comes to young players that make that jump to the next level, no doubt it means so much for them to make the All-Star Game," Wade said.

Doug Smith of the Toronto Star: Slowly but surely it’s coming, the tenacity and efficiency, the overall solid play that was part of an electrifying start to the NBA season for the Raptors, is becoming more and more apparent. They are not quite there yet — they may never be — but the signs are true and obvious and it would seem the hiccup or regression of a three-week spell that started right after Christmas is going away. They are defending more effectively, taking care of the ball more carefully, operating with intelligence and effectiveness on offence. They will never be perfect, but every now and then they can be very good. A thorough dismantling of the Indiana Pacers here Tuesday night, a 104-91 victory that got Toronto to the 30-win plateau more quickly than any season in franchise history, was case study in effective play in almost every facet of the game.

Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon-Journal: Since last Monday’s win against the Chicago Bulls, the Cavs are holding opponents to 40.2 percent shooting. That’s third-best in the league behind the Wizards and Hornets. They’re holding opponents to 93.8 points, which ranks eighth and their plus/minus of plus-17 is third behind only the Warriors and Clippers. In short, the Cavs have it rolling. We know this because they’re rolling even on nights when they’re not rolling. Like Tuesday. Forget about the 103 points. The Cavs did not play well offensively. They only broke 100 for the eighth straight game because they scored 10 points from the free-throw line in the final minute when the Pistons resorted to fouling. Otherwise they shot 42 percent and missed a ton of open looks. Big deal. It happens. But they won the game with another stiff defensive effort, by blocking four shots and holding the Pistons to 42 percent while forcing 18 turnovers.

Joseph Goodman of The Miami Herald: With heavy overtones of a staged public appearance, boxers Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. attended the Heat’s home game against the Milwaukee Bucks and briefly spoke on the court at halftime. Pacquiao said it was the first time the boxers have ever spoken to each other in person. The big question: Will there ever be a fight? “Yeah, I believe so,” Pacquiao said. Mayweather said last month that he’s ready to make the fight happen May 2. The boxers were seated almost directly opposite of each other in courtside seats during the game. At halftime, Mayweather walked across the court to Pacquiao and engaged in a conversation. There were theatrics, of course, but no trash talking. “He gave his number to me and then said we would communicate with each other,” Pacquiao said. In other words, Pacquiao and Mayweather might be working out a deal between themselves to finally fight each other, or at least they wanted to plant that story in case anything materializes.

Bruce Jenkins of the San Francisco Chronicle: There was a time, long ago, when the Warriors were every bit as compelling, cohesive and uproariously entertaining as they are today. For the fans who remembered that 1988-89 season, Tuesday night’s bobblehead giveaway at Oracle Arena was especially meaningful. At 7-foot-7, Manute Bol was the tallest player the NBA had ever seen, a formidable measurement exceeded only by the size of his heart. He came out of southern Sudan, the son of a Dinka tribal chief who gave him a special name, translated into “special blessing.” And he was all of that. Chris Mullin met him before Bol had even begun his NBA career. They struck up a cherished friendship and Mullin’s family actually took in Bol as a housemate in Brooklyn for a spell. At Mullin’s encouragement, the Warriors acquired Bol in a trade with the Washington Bullets — and life around the Oakland Coliseum Arena, as it was known back then, would never be quite the same.

Paul Coro of The Arizona Republic: Jeff Hornacek has tried letting the players keep their feisty edge but they wound up leading the NBA in technical fouls and ostensibly leading to a loss at San Antonio. Hornacek tried telling players they would be benched for getting a technical over arguing with officials but Goran Dragic and Markieff Morris did it anyway in consecutive games last weekend. The latter turned a third-quarter tie into a 20-point loss to the Clippers. They found middle ground Tuesday. "We're just going to try to do a better job as teammates to corral each other when they start to argue," Hornacek said. "The guys (said) they would do that. I told them, 'If you guys do that and kind of help each other out there on the court, we'll kind of look at it and it'll be my discretion whether we do it for the rest of the game.' So we don't have that hard-and-fast rule but I may still sit him for the end of the game if I feel like it." The Suns have a league-high 36 player technical fouls this season.