The 10-man rotation, starring Vince Carter’s dunk over Frederic Weis, 15 years later
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.com. Michael Wallace and Rob Petersen’s oral history of Vince Carter jumping over 7-foot-2 Frederic Weis in the 2000 Sydney Olympics is worth your time.
PF: Sports Illustrated. The great Lee Jenkins talks to Chris Bosh — now officially cleared for contact and basketball activity — about the blood clots on his lung that ended his 2014-15 season (and could’ve ended more than that), about what he learned about himself during his lengthy layoff, and the renewed sense of self and purpose he’s bringing to a Miami Heat team with designs on returning to title contention.
SF: Beyond the Arc. Kevin Lope offers the reasonable counterpoint to articles (like mine!) about how the Memphis Grizzlies have become one of the league’s most reliable institutions: If you know exactly what you’re going to get from a team, then what else is there for you to say about it?
SG: The Guardian. The president of Real Madrid wants his team to move from Euroleague to the NBA. European NBA teams aren’t happening any time soon, for reasons we’ve discussed before, but I dug this breakdown by Terrance F. Ross — no, not the Slam Dunk Contest-winning Toronto Raptors swingman — of why it won’t, and the idea he floats late in the piece: “In the interim what we’ll be most likely to see in the near future is some sort of Champions League for basketball. It’s not hard to foresee a basketball equivalent, where some of the best NBA teams face off against their European counterparts in some sort of single-elimination matchup.”
PG: Sports Illustrated and RealGM. Rob Mahoney on how Tristan Thompson’s as-yet-unresolved contract negotiations reveal the difference between a player’s worth and his value, and Jonathan Tjarks on the question hanging over those talks: assuming there’s some limit to how much Dan Gilbert’s willing to spend, should the Cleveland Cavaliers back up the Brinks truck for Thompson now or for Timofey Mozgov next summer?
6th: VICE Sports. A good read from Howard Megdal on how much credit Isiah Thomas deserves for the New York Liberty’s rise to the best record in the WNBA — and, at the moment, a 1-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals — during his first season in charge.
7th: Nylon Calculus. Really cool stuff from Seth Partnow, using SportVU player tracking data to compare how big men fare in the post when guarded by fellow behemoths and how they do against smaller defenders, with an eye toward identifying those players most capable of bullying mismatches and those against whom you might be able to get away with small-ball defenses.
8th: The Triangle. Andrew Sharp wants to geek out about the ’98-’99 Knicks, and specifically about young Marcus Camby, which is just fine by me.
9th: MinnPost. The great Britt Robson on how the awful news that Flip Saunders has Hodgkins lymphoma casts nearly everything about the Minnesota Timberwolves’ season into uncertainty.
10th: The Telegraph. “[…] she was asked which Italian historical figure she most admired. After a long pause, the beauty queen replied: ‘Michael Jordan, the greatest player in basketball history.'”
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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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