Reconfiguring the Boris Diaw Narrative, Plus the Weekly Wrap Up

By WARREN YIU One of the telling narratives to emerge from Golden State’s destruction of all-comers last season was the emergence of Draymond Green as an ancillary play-maker; an offensive outlet who could punish opponents brave enough to trap Stephen Curry, with smart decision-making. Far from being a league saturated with “stretch 4s”, it’s the emergence…

Making Sense of Dallas: What is the Mavs’ Endgame?

By WARREN YIU The DeAndre Jordan circus has, rightly or wrongly, overshadowed the NBA’s free agency period. Whether you’re in the Dallas Camp, or you’re in the Clippers’ corner; whether you’re a firm believer that a verbal agreement should be binding, or you are more forgiving when it comes to life choices, the point is moot.…

Five Questions to Consider for Season 2015/16

By WARREN YIU A week has passed in free agency and all the topline free agents, not named Lebron James, are already off the board. Barring any major LeShock, the Spurs remain the only team to land a landscape-changing Big Fish, in LaMarcus Aldridge. In fact, despite the frenzied nature of signings and team transactions, there was very…

Building on the Fly: the Suns and Pacers have Grand Designs

By WARREN YIU Residing in the NBA’s middle class is often seen as NBA purgatory, particularly within a league defined by a lexicon of “championship or bust”. Teams who barely make the postseason also barely miss picking in the lottery, a seemingly inequitable trade-off that can make teams queasy about chasing a lower seed. What is the point of…

What is Boston doing?

By WARREN YIU The Boston Celtics, with their treasure trove of accumulated assets, were perfectly positioned to strike. After all, this was the plan all along. The Celtics understood that the window of title contention with their modern Big 3 of Kevin Garnett, Paul Pierce and Ray Allen had drawn to a close. That July 2013 trade of…

Sorry You Had to Split: Tiago Splitter to the Hawks

By WARREN YIU My initial reaction of the Tiago Splitter trade to the Atlanta Hawks was mixed. On the one hand, it was a perfectly reasonable move designed to clear cap space for the LaMarcus Aldridge Sweepstakes. On the other, it signalled the end of Splitter’s time with a franchise in which he helped to propel…

The Lance Stephenson Gamble

By WARREN YIU Lance Stephenson improbably became the worst player in the NBA this past regular season. He sported the lowest win shares in the league at -0.9, per Basketball Reference, meaning he was the only player in the league to cost his team a win during the regular season just by being on the…

A Quick and Dirty: Some Xs and Os adjustments for Game 3

By WARREN YIU In one of my favourite sequences of Game 2 of this crazy Finals, the Warriors tried to generate pace into their offense by going to their small lineup of Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson. Andre Iguodala, Harrison Barnes and Draymond Green at center. The Cavs countered by having their giant human, Timofey Mozgoz…

Top 10 Post Up Brutes in the NBA

By WARREN YIU Gosh, I miss this. It seems like eons since we last saw Timmy clowning fools from the left block on a regular basis. In recent years much has been said about the demise of the post up, as more and more NBA teams adopted spread offense principles centered around penetrating guards, lob-finishing…

NBA Finals Preview

By WARREN YIU At last we’re here. Two teams remain out of a field of thirty, and it feels about right that these two teams were the best this season. The Golden Freaking State Warriors were the class of the Western Conference for season 2014/15, winning a franchise-best 67 games, 11 games better than the…