We've been MIA on the old lunchbox links for a while so figured today would be a good day to catch up.
Let's start with the NBA playoffs as the conference finals are in progress. The Spurs beat the Thunder in Game 1 of the West final last night, where we found out Stephen Jackson's middle name, and Manu Ginobili out-shined James Harden. But Mike Prada still has seven questions regarding the series on a whole.
In the East, it's Heat vs Celtics and SB Nation's Tom Ziller discusses LeBron James' issues with beating the C's over the past while.
Let's move to the draft now, the lottery being only a few days away. Based on a tweet a few minutes ago from the Raptors, it sounds like Dwane Casey will be representing the team at the podium, and Raptors.com has their "draft central" ready to rock...and includes an interesting Pinterest page dedicated to the team's draft history.
And how about some thoughts from Mr. Lottery Ball himself?
Continuing on the draft topic, this year's draft marks five years since the infamous Oden/Durant decision of 2007, and SB Nation revisits the affair, looking at what perhaps should have gone down. Milwaukee Bucks' blog dedicates a whole post to the topic in fact, and wouldn't you if your club drafted Yi?
The draft is one way teams look to improve during the off-season and of late we've seen a number of "team needs" posts. Here's one from Rotoworld that makes little to no sense considering the lottery hasn't occurred, and a much better one from The Score.com.
One of the needs that's been brought up is of course at the PG spot and the Toronto Sun's Ryan Wolstat digs into the Kyle Lowry option a bit more here.
We'll cap this edition off with some insightful info regarding the NBA's best shooters, and some not-so-insightful links that are entertaining nonetheless; Kyrie Irving as Uncle Drew, Blake Griffin's dunks getting the NBA jam treatment, and TSN, showing us why indeed, hockey lives there, and basketball is an afterthought at best...