The 10-man rotation, starring the matchups to watch in the 2015 NBA Finals
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: The Triangle, Feltbot and Basketball Insiders. Three very good and smart considerations of the lineup and rotation matchup issues facing both Steve Kerr and David Blatt heading into the 2015 NBA Finals.
PF: Eye on Basketball, Prada’s Pictures and ProBasketballTalk. Good looks from Matt Moore and Mike Prada at how the Warriors might try to defend LeBron James, and from Dan Feldman at how the Cavaliers might try to defend Stephen Curry.
SF: Basketball Insiders. A reminder, as I noted last week: Stephen Curry’s contract has turned out to be an absolutely insane bargain.
SG: ESPN.com. Ethan Sherwood Strauss on how the scheme Golden State has deployed en route to leading the league in points allowed per possession was built.
PG: Wall Street Journal. Ben Cohen and Chris Herring on the hidden advantage that both the Cleveland Cavaliers and Golden State Warriors have exploited in their run to the NBA Finals: “Australians, in other words, were basically born to be NBA role players.”
6th: Miami Herald. Dan Le Batard with an interesting view of the potential for fireworks in the suddenly simmering contract discussions between Dwyane Wade and the Miami Heat.
7th: The Hook. Tom Ziller teases out one of the underlying issues Le Batard laid out: that Wade’s been taking a bit less to facilitate Miami’s moves for years, which is the sort of thing that tends to get widely praised by the public (think about how Tim Duncan and Dirk Nowitzki’s pay cuts were received) but is also very much the sort of thing that the National Basketball Players Association seems to be opposing as it heads toward a new round of collective bargaining negotiations with the league’s owners.
8th: The Triangle. Latvian 7-footer Kristaps Porzingis is probably going to be one of the top five picks in June’s 2015 NBA draft, and if you don’t know anything about him, this five-minute mini-documentary with accompanying essay by Danny Chau seems like an awfully good place to start.
9th: ESPN Chicago and RealGM. Jon Greenberg on the stylistic shift that Fred Hoiberg plans to bring to the Windy City, and Jonathan Tjarks on one immediate lineup change that could help the Bulls fit Hoiberg’s system and perhaps revamp the Chicago Bulls’ often-staid offense.
10th: BBallBreakdown. Coach Nick takes a closer look at a bunch of the sets Hoiberg ran at Iowa State to try to forecast how things might look with the Bulls’ personnel running them, and winds up with some concerns about how Derrick Rose and Pau Gasol might fit into the scheme, barring significant adaptations.
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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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