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: Behance Gallery. Sleeved jerseys are here, and advertisements on them are all but inevitable. Maybe if what the NBA and Adidas came up with looked a bit less like crummy T-shirts and a bit more like the soccer-inspired designs dreamed up by Jesse Nuñez, basketball fans wouldn't mind quite as much. (Now let's see some with the existing logos replaced by football-style crests, too.)
PF: Slate. Amanda Hess: "When it comes to women in professional sports, the NBA often seems to be the only men’s league eager to make historic choices." That reputation only got burnished on Tuesday. (Kate Perkins also has a nice piece on Becky Hammon's historic hire for Self magazine's Flash blog, noting that "doing the right thing is indistinguishable, in the [San Antonio] Spurs organization, from doing basketball right.")
SF: TrueHoop. Justin Verrier on the Los Angeles Lakers' "delusional" but "a bit endearing" refusal to acknowledge that the West has passed them by, a fate largely sealed with a $48.5 million salute last winter.
SG: A Wolf Among Wolves. If a Kevin Love-for-Andrew Wiggins trade is indeed coming in just a few weeks' time, Steve McPherson thinks the Minnesota Timberwolves would do well to see if they can loop the Philadelphia 76ers into the deal and come away with Thaddeus Young. (Andrew Unterberger considers the prospect of a Young trade from a Sixers fan's perspective at The 700 Level.)
PG: Hardwood Paroxysm. Jeremy Conlin wonders whether Bradley Beal is better than Dion Waiters, how wide the gulf between the two shooting guards is, and whether said gulf is more a matter of context than hard-and-fast talent differential.
6th: SLAM. Brendan Bowers profiles Waiters, who says he spoke with LeBron James before the Cleveland deal got done: "He called me and just told me to be ready. Be ready. I talked to him four or five days before he made his decision. He just got on the phone and said, 'I haven’t made my mind up yet but be ready.' I told him that I’m already working hard. I’ll be ready. And he said, 'I know, I know you are.' Then a few days later I read the letter."
7th: Grantland. Zach Lowe considers the ways in which the evolution of NBA offenses and defenses has changed the market for big men who aren't floor-spacers or rim protectors.
8th: Eye on Basketball and Bucksketball. Zach Harper on the need for new head coach Jason Kidd to once again get weird with the Milwaukee Bucks' fun and awkward roster this season, and Nick Whalen on whether O.J. Mayo can bounce back enough from a dismal first year in Wisconsin to be an effective part of the weirdness.
9th: Derek Bodner. An argument that the reported potential adjustments to the NBA draft lottery system don't actually address the supposed scourge of tanking, but rather the perception problem the league faces in an environment where the 76ers aren't pretending to be ashamed of losing now to win later.
10th: The Classical. A fun read from John Wilmes on how Joel Embiid's irrepressible Twitter persona helps provide a counterbalance to the Sixers' (and, increasingly, many other NBA teams') contextually cold approach to roster-building: "Here is a Personnel Asset that refuses to stop acting like a goofy human being."
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
Stay connected with Ball Don't Lie on Twitter @YahooBDL, "Like" BDL on Facebook and follow BDL's Tumblr for year-round NBA talk, jokes and more.
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