Basketball Intelligence For 6/11/25
The day's best news and reporting
THE BASKETBALL INTELLIGENCE NETWORK
The players from 2024's draft ready for a larger role
Ray is joined by Nick Agar-Johnson and Nathan Grubel of No Ceilings for this episode to discuss five players from the 2024 NBA Draft class who are likely to be in line for a larger role in Year Two than they played in their rookie year. They start out by discussing Nikola Topic and DaRon Holmes, two players who missed their rookie campaigns due to injur…
*FEATURES OF THE DAY*
Parenting and game plans: Inside Jenny Boucek's extraordinary basketball journey to the Pacers
Ramona Shelburne, ESPN
espn doesn’t need another reshuffle. it needs to shut up and let smart people work. doris burke is not the problem. she’s the benchmark. and if the booth doesn’t have chemistry yet, maybe - just maybe - it’s because you keep hitting reset before anyone gets a chance to breathe. but sure. blame doris. after all, the real sin in modern sports media isn’t being wrong. it’s being right in complete sentences.
IN MEMORY
David Greenwood, former UCLA and Verbum Dei star who won an NBA title, dies
Ben Bolch, Los Angeles Times
NBA FINALS
'Easier said than done.' Pacers looking for more paint points against NBA's toughest defense
Dustin Dopirak, Indianapolis Star
The Pacers didn't score a point in the paint in the first quarter, managing just two field goal attempts in the lane and missing both. They scored 12 points in the paint in the second quarter, but just four in the third on 2-of-4 shooting. They managed 18 in the fourth quarter when they were playing off their backs but finished with 34, well short of their season average of of 51.0 per game — which put them 11th in the NBA — or even their playoff average of 43.4 per game which puts them ninth. They also finished with 34 points in the paint in Game 1 and managed to win in spite of that, but know that's not a recipe for success. Last season they led the league in points in the paint, which served as the engine for an offense that posted the sixth highest points-per-game average in NBA history and the highest in 40 years.
What stat is key in the NBA Finals? Getting into the paint
Esfandiar Baraheni, The Athletic
Finals Film Study: Shai Gilgeous-Alexander burns Pacers in pick-and-roll in Game 2
John Schuman, NBA.com
NBA Finals 2025: Where Pacers land among league's most surprising runs
Kevin Pelton, ESPN
The 1981 Rockets probably stand alone as the single most surprising Finals team since the ABA-NBA merger. Although we don't have preseason title odds, Houston was coming off a 41-41 season and had a worse record in 1980-81 (40-42), but knocked off the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers in Round 1 and a 52-win San Antonio Spurs team in the conference semifinals before a sub-.500 conference finals matchup with the Kansas City Kings.
BI: While that surprising Rockets team was led by the perennially underrated (at least by modern pundits) Moses Malone, two players who were quite important to the team’s unexpected success would also go on to become very good coaches in their own right: Mike Dunleavy and Rudy Tomjanovich.
Pacers back at the 'House working to find answers for Thunder
Tom Lewis, Indy Cornrows With Tom Lewis
2025 NBA Finals: 4 things to watch for in Game 3
Steve Aschburner, NBA.com
Lu Dort’s defense on Tyrese Haliburton central in Thunder’s quest for NBA Finals control
Anthony Slater, The Athletic
2025 NBA Finals: OKC Thunder Paint Defense Has Pacers Out Of Character
Tony East, Forbes
The secret to winning the NBA Finals is hidden in the lowlight reels — Tyrese Haliburton and Lu Dort get it
Dave Feschuk, Toronto Star
NBA Finals 2025: The Thunder's GOAT? Alex Caruso is more than just a basketball version of the Tasmanian Devil
Yaron Weitzman, Yahoo! Sports
So, yes, the player we’ve seen throughout the playoffs, and in his first season with the Oklahoma City Thunder, and really over the past five seasons, is who Caruso has always been. The running, the diving, the swiping, that blur of activity that looks like a tornado with arms — it all comes naturally to him. On the court, it’s Caruso’s version of breathing.
Thunder vs. Pacers NBA Finals: Pascal Siakam needs to regain East finals MVP form for Indiana to maintain control of series
Dan Devine, Yahoo! Sports
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