NBA Finals Preview – 6 Key Questions for Warriors – Raptors

NBA Finals Preview - 6 Questions for Warriors-Raptors By Doug Norrie Well, here we are. After roughly seven months of basketball (and a whole lot of drama) we’ve reached the NBA Finals. One of the more interesting basketball seasons in memory reaches a culmination that still holds so many teams in the balance. Will Durant be back with the Warriors? Probably not. Will he even play in this series? Spoiler alert: It’s not looking good. Is making the Finals (or winning the Finals) enough to keep Kawhi in Toronto? He’s had such a crazy run so far, hitting the shot that had him eaten by zombies, coming back from down two games to the seemingly unstoppable Bucks and now he’s in the Finals. But this dude also just sat out of a playoff run for the Spurs and doesn’t come from any kind of superstar mold we are used to. Offshore books still have the Clippers as the favorite to land him and this series could be the difference in a franchise whether he stays or leaves. So much hangs in the balance here. The Warriors opened at -300 to win, but it was quickly bet down to -285. It’s hovering around there right now with the speculation that Durant misses at least the first two games. I wouldn't be shocked if it dropped a little bit more in the short term.  Regardless, there's a ton to dissect going into the first Lebron-less Finals of the last eight years. Let's get into some of the key questions leading into this series.  Will Kevin Durant play? Will it matter? The official injury report coming out of Golden State heading into the Finals is that Kevin Durant has yet to resume basketball activities, and could, at best, come back *later* in the series (whatever that means). Meanwhile, DeMarcus Cousins looks much closer to returning after sitting out the better part of the last six weeks with a quad injury.Let’s start (and mostly finish) with Durant, considering this will be the focal point of discussion leading up to Game 1 (and beyond) of the Finals. Are the Warriors better without Durant? This question is ludicrous. No team gets better after losing a top 4 (maybe as high as top 1) player in basketball. To suggest otherwise is to completely miss the boat on who he is as a player. Now that being said, the Warriors are coming off a stretch of 5-0 (full games) without Durant in which they looked pretty damn good. They were a throwback to the *old* Warriors. In fact, for the playoffs, below are the two most-used five-man rotations for Golden State. Net rating for the second lineup without Durant...