The 10-man rotation, starring Jason Collins, what’s changed and what hasn’t
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: Outsports. Jim Buzinski on the two-year anniversary of Jason Collins — now a colleague of ours at Yahoo Sports — coming out of the closet, and how little seems to have changed in the sporting landscape two years down the line.
PF: The Oklahoman. With reports flying that Billy Donovan’s move from the University of Florida to the Oklahoma City Thunder is well underway, Anthony Slater offers those of us who haven’t paid tons of attention to SEC basketball over the last two decades a look at Donovan’s coaching style and approach, with an eye toward how it might translate at the NBA level.
SF: DraftExpress. An interesting consideration of how Jimmy Butler’s personality type dovetailed with the specific opportunities he found with the Chicago Bulls to fuel his rise to All-Star status, and what lessons the combinations might offer scouts and teams looking to unearth another similarly undervalued asset in drafts and free-agency periods to come.
SG: Sportsnet and The Star. Michael Grange and Bruce Arthur on Masai Ujiri, who’s finally going to have to make some decisions this summer.
PG: SB Nation. Jon Bois uses “NBA 2K15” to present a dystopian futurescape in which all NBA players are immortal godlike beings. The results are predictably, wondrously bonkers.
6th: Golden State of Mind. Everything seems awfully sunny for the Golden State Warriors right about now, so let’s invite some cloud cover: Just what will they do with eight-figure non-contributor David Lee this summer?
7th: ESPN Insider ($). Amin Elhassan breaks down “Elbow Get,” the Mike D’Antoni-Suns-era four-five pick-and-roll set with which the Houston Rockets’ big-man duo of Dwight Howard and Josh Smith repeatedly torched the Dallas Mavericks.
8th: ESPN the Magazine. David Fleming, who last year wrote perhaps the definitive breakdown of Stephen Curry’s shooting style, takes us to Grottoes, Va., and the lone iron hoop on the utility pole that serves as Ground Zero for the birth of two elite shooters.
9th: The Sporting News. Adi Joseph exchanges emails with Chad Shanks, the social media manager fired by the Houston Rockets after sending a tweet featuring an emoji gun to the head of an emoji horse in the closing seconds of a series-clinching win over the Dallas Mavericks: “The good thing about social media is you get instant responses to your work. The bad thing about social media is you get instant responses to your work.”
10th: ESPN.com. Brian Windhorst takes a closer look at the financial considerations that will factor into Kevin Love’s choice of whether to pick up his player option and return to the Cleveland Cavaliers or opt out and enter free agency this summer, all of which he’ll have plenty of time to consider now that he’s officially done for the season.
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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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