'25 Playoff Rotation Predictions: A Collaborative Deep Dive

[KillerLeft]

Note to KL, following up with this post ^ and re my too-binary" thinking - look at the way Kidd played it in this game they thought important...
Lively 32 Gafford 16
PJW 38 Maxi 10
Klay 20 [Naji out]
Kyrie 35 Grimes 20 (fills in some of Naji missing)
Luka 40 SD 24 (fills in some of Naji missing) Hardy 4 (fills in some of Naji missing)

IMO Kidd's way MORE binary than we tend to realize, and the mix-and-match stuff is due to the reality of injuries and matchup/foul issues in a game.

I agree with what you're saying on a surface level view of how the roster is assembled, and, by extension, how Kidd wants his "base" rotation and schemes to work, as he was undoubtedly consulted about how the roster should be put together. 

I agree that some of his deviation from that (which has been frequent, not only this season, but in previous ones) can be linked directly to the lack of availability of some choices due to injury. I'm even comfortable with the opinion, regardless of whether or not I share it, that the word "some" should really be "most" in my previous sentence. 

But, I also feel like a lot of these choices are based on playing style matchups, talent matchups and good old "they're beating us when we try this" factors. Any NBA coach knows that sometimes plan A just doesn't work. We've seen Kidd throw stuff at the wall in the past during such situations, especially in last year's playoffs. When I see that A) the roster seems to include several players with great versatility in terms of both skillset and position, and B) we've seen already, in just 20ish games, a great deal of experimentation with those combinations, my sense (or hope, at least) is that there was intent there. That giving him options was part of the off-season thinking. In other words, my hope is that they (Kidd and Harrison) learned from what beat them last season and have baked some choices into the cake for challenging contingencies. The ability to play smaller (and therefore quicker, faster and much more skilled) is just one of the choices I have in mind.

For example, even the changes to the offensive system have multiple disguised benefits. Yes, filling the rotation up with nothing but players who can shoot, floor the ball to attack closeouts, pass off the dribble and even get shots off at the middle level (which describes literally everyone in the current rotation except the centers, both of whom roll hard and have expanded their responsibilities as well) can be seen as a simple upgrade of the talent, but it's not lost on me that it also serves to lessen the diversity of responsibility within the system from position to position, making new combinations of players even easier to find. 

Basically, they can play based on defensive matchups more than they could last year, because the offense is more able to flow this way (in theory). They can put out entire lineups based on switching (which I saw the other day is a drastically increased defensive strategy for them so far this season). I could go on and on, but my read on the changes made this off-season are about versatility, not strict categorization. It will be interesting to see how it all plays out over the course of a season with a wide variety of challenges, for sure.