This is as close to bringing in a head coach as you can get without hiring a former head coach, plus he had a 15-year NBA career players’ respect.Ĭassell can also teach the players a dance that can get them fined. ![]() Cassell had been on Doc Rivers’ bench in Philadelphia the past few seasons and the Los Angeles Clippers before that. Sam Cassell is headed to Boston to be one of the new key assistants for Joe Mazzulla with the Celtics, a story broken by Shams Charania of The Athletic and confirmed by Chris Forsberg at NBC Sports Boston.We’ve done a couple of notebook-style updates. The musical chairs in NBA coaching and front office circles continues at full speed during the NBA Finals. For the Bulls, Zach LaVine is the guy to watch. (38.9% on 6.8 attempts a game) are the most likely Raptors to get hot. This isn’t rocket science, if one of these teams can get a shooter or two hot from 3 it will change the course of this game and give them a huge advantage.įred VanVleet (34.2% on 8.8 attempts a game) or maybe Gary Trent Jr. The Bulls make the ones they take - 36.1%, ranked 16th - but they took just 28.9 per game, dead last in the league. The Raptors shot 33.5% from beyond the arc as a team, 28th in the league. In a league in love with the 3-pointer, neither of these teams was very good at it. Poeltl has done that and the Bulls need to find a way to counter him. The Raptors’ front office believes in this core, but it needed a more traditional center in the middle to unlock it. On the offensive end, he is the kind of solid screener who creates space for gifted offensive players such as Siakam. Poeltl changes the Toronto defense with his physicality in the paint, and the Raptors are 5.6 points per 100 possessions better on that end when he is on the court. The Raptors went 15-10 with Poeltl in the lineup (only one of those games was against the Bulls). ![]() ![]() That addition helped turn their season around. 2) The Jakob Poeltl factorĪ couple of weeks before the trade deadline, general managers around the league were hatching strategies to get Pascal Siakam and the other top players out of Toronto when the Raptors became sellers.Įxcept the Raptors became buyers, moving to add big man Poeltl out of San Antonio. Chicago may counter with the athleticism of Patrick Williams to match up, but is he ready to perform on this stage? We know the Raptors will not be shaken by the moment. The Raptors also now lean on Jakob Poeltl to protect the rim inside should those guys get beatĪll of that makes this a rough matchup for the Bulls. That will likely put Scottie Barnes, a long and physically strong defender, on Zach LaVine. Look for OG Anunoby - one of the best perimeter defenders in the league - to start the game on DeMar DeRozan. We’ll see what Nick Nurse decides but expect a lot of pressure and guys jumping passing lanes. However, playoff basketball is about matchups and the Raptors’ length and athleticism could be a nightmare for the Bulls. Toronto is a solid defensive team, 11th in the league this season. 1) Can DeRozan, LaVine handle Nick Nurse’s pressure defense? Here are three things to watch in this game. The loser goes on an early vacation and faces some tough off-season questions. The winner flies to Miami for a Friday night game to determine the eighth seed. ![]() They both find themselves in Wednesday night’s win-or-go-home 9/10 play-in game in the East. Their front offices stuck with their cores and added rather than subtracted. Things were bad enough, early enough for both of these teams that around the league many expected both to be sellers at the trade deadline.
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