The 10-man rotation, starring Derrick Rose’s new mission
A look around the league and the Web that covers it. It’s also important to note that the rotation order and starting nods aren’t always listed in order of importance. That’s for you, dear reader, to figure out.
C: ESPN the Magazine. The great Wright Thompson on Derrick Rose, whose “second mission begins now, and, as with the first one” — the mission to “escape his neighborhood and his old life,” to buy his mom a new house, to “change the arc of his family” — the Chicago Bulls point guard “doesn’t know how it will end.” Brilliant stuff.
PF: Nylon Calculus. More 3-pointers. A stylistic shift toward more free-flowing offense, plus fewer elite defenses dotting the landscape. Could it all lead to a new NBA record for league-wide offensive efficiency this season?
SF: Ballerball. A bit of brake-pumping satire on how the advent of NBA jersey advertisements will ruin everything: “With this move, the NBA will slide further and further into oblivion, much like soccer, the world’s largest sport.”
SG: GordonHayward20.com. There are, as you might expect, quite a few gems in Jonathan Abrams’ feature on Joakim Noah’s come-up as “probably the most unprecedented success story in basketball in America,” but my personal favorite comes from his high-school coach’s description of Noah’s college recruitment: “‘And Duke was calling,’ McNally said, ‘but he didn’t really see himself as a Dukie.'” No, I’d imagine not.
PG: RealGM. Danny Leroux looks at the completed deals involving 2015 NBA draft picks, and the protections in place on those selections, to try to determine which teams could find themselves compelled to take the foot off the gas late in the season — or, to use a more unkind descriptor, to tank — so they don’t lose their pick. (We’re looking at you, Sacramento.)
6th: NBA.com. The great David Aldridge’s weekly Morning Tip column comes packed with enough good stuff — on how the NBA’s new multibillion-dollar TV deal will impact contract negotiations, how the Minnesota Timberwolves are keeping No. 1 overall pick Andrew Wiggins under wraps, how Stan Van Gundy divides his day as the Detroit Pistons’ head coach and president of basketball operations, etc. — to last us a full week.
7th: Grantland. Kirk Goldsberry uses the NBA’s SportVU optical tracking data to dig deep on rebounding direction, figuring out where missed shots taken from different parts of the court are most likely to end up, which has been a pretty popular topic at the Sloan Sports Analytics Conference over the past couple of years.
8th: The Hook. Tom Ziller, longtime Sacramento Kings fan and confirmed Los Angeles Lakers hater, tries to figure out why exactly he doesn’t hate Kobe Bryant anymore.
9th: The Triangle. Zach Lowe makes 33 predictions for the coming season, which makes for fun reading.
10th: Pounding the Rock. Lee Dresie recalls what it was like to coach against Gregg Popovich during his Division III days at Pomona-Pitzer, ages before he’d ascend to the ranks of the all-time greats through his work with the San Antonio Spurs: “The games were so loud that we had to call in plays and defenses by holding up pieces of cardboard with different colors or numbers on them because the players didn’t have a chance of hearing us over the crowd.”
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
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