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...

Daily Fantasy Basketball Injury News and Updates for FanDuel and DraftKings - 3/1/16 Welcome to the daily updates and injury news article. We'll try and update it right up to line-up locks with as much information as comes across our desks. Let's get to it! Last night's picks can be found here, so you can wrap your mind around what you need to be looking at before lineups lock tonight. By the way - we keep our projection system updated with all of the changes as they occur throughout the day right up until lineup lock. Every day. If you want access to that system so you can cut out a lot of the research element, click the button below! Special Note: Our new optimizer is available! Click the button below to check it out and see if it's right for you. SEE OUR NEW TOOLS NOW! Now let’s look at some news that’s come in throughout the day to see if anything’s changed in our minds or in the NBA landscape. It's a shorter slate and a light news day, but we'll be updating as stuff rolls in. Also throw out some ideas in the comments and we can take it from there. What We Know Alex Len is starting. Earl Watson has come out publicly and said the Suns are going to "try something new" with a twin-towers approach of Len and Chandler. Knowing this, Len is a must play until he's something like $6,000 on DraftKings and FanDuel. Love him tonight. Kobe is out, and we're bumping D'Angelo Russell, Anthony Brown, and Julius Randle Russell looks to be the biggest beneficiary, boasting a gaudy 27.8% usage with Bryant off the floor this season. Anthony Brown played 32 minutes in his first game back (with Kobe out), and Julius Randle sees a 10% usage bump as well with Kobe off the floor. Basically, this makes every Laker who you can project for reasonable playing time a nice play, since they'll spread around 30 minutes and 30% of the usage during those minutes.   What We're Waiting to Know Stephen Curry - Will his ankle hold him out? Easily the biggest shoe to drop tonight, for obvious reasons. Redistributing 32% usage and 34 minutes is huge, and the primary Warriors benefactors will be Klay Thompson (whose usage rises to 30 with Curry off the court), and Shaun Livingston, who would likely play a starter's minutes. It has the domino effect of making the game a lot less likely to be a blowout, which is a boon to the projections of everyone involved. For now, I'm operating under the assumption that he's playing, but I'll be cautious until we...