3. Rotations
The preseason is a bad time to draw conclusions about the team’s rotations as star players will be held back to avoid exerting unnecessary strain, but I do think it’ll still give us a rough idea of which players make up the core of the bench. It seems almost definite that the starting lineup will be made up of Ben Simmons, Seth Curry, Danny Green, Tobias Harris, and Joel Embiid. What I’m more interested to see is which players will have the biggest roles coming off the bench.
Throughout training camp, Rivers has consistently praised Shake Milton highly. Rivers said in his most recent media availability:
"“Shake can be a starter or a 6th Man…Shake is going to be a heck of a basketball player. He really is, you can just see it all over him.”"
This makes me quite confident that Milton will be first off the bench. Dwight Howard will also be a major contributor with Embiid’s minutes always being closely monitored due to injury concern.
The rest of the bench, I’m less sure about. Rivers also seems to have lots of confidence in Furkan Korkmaz, so I’m sure he’ll get a fair amount of minutes. Contrarily, he hasn’t said much about Matisse Thybulle, which could be alarming but I don’t think that is the case after a season that crushed expectations for Thybulle. Thybulle is also the second best wing defender in this team and Rivers referred to him as an all-defensive player in October, which leads me to believe that he’ll also have a role to play.
Mike Scott is coming off a poor season and that does lead me to question whether his minutes will be significant. Whilst he is the natural replacement at the power forward position, Rivers does have the option of using Simmons at the four with the second unit. Alternatively, he could explore using Thybulle there in smaller lineups.
Unfortunately for the rookie, I think Tyrese Maxey will be scraping together whatever minutes remain but I do hope that he does get given a proper chance as he could provide creation and playmaking only rivalled by Shake Milton coming off the bench. A proposal that is waiting to be approved by the NBA board to allow 15 players on a team’s roster has been made. Other players that will fill out the roster will most likely include Terrance Ferguson, Isaiah Joe, Tony Bradley, and Justin Anderson.