By Jose Grijalva, Project Spurs.comWhile San Antonio Spurs fans are sweating a brief Kawhi Leonard injury (out 10-14 days according to the Spurs), this injury may be a blessing in disguise for the team to try out more rotations with their abundance of guards. I'm sure head coach Gregg Popovich plays plenty of different lineups against each other during practices, but nothing is like a real NBA game.
The bigger question is: What does coach Pop do with his starting small forward position going forward and how will it effect the rest of the team? The frustrating part for him is that he has more options than most coaches would:
Start Stephen Jackson: It seems like the likely scenario. He's a defensive minded 3-point shooting guard-forward who backs up... a player with the same mindset. Pop starting Jackson wouldn't change anything with the Spurs' starting unit, maybe with more plays being run Jackson's way than Leonard would. With him starting, that would leave the second unit strictly to Ginobili and Patty Mills. The big hole Jackson leaves isn't in the small forward role, but in the power forward position. He's been spotting Leonard from the bench but also playing the 4-position for good amounts of minutes so far in the season. Jackson starting would force Pop's hand to play Tiago Splitter, DeJuan Blair, and Boris Diaw together more and next to Tim Duncan than he has this season. We may even have a Matt Bonner sighting too! This would be mainly to not have an encore of a tired Spurs team heading into the fourth quarter and running out of gas like they did against the Knicks. This move would push De Colo to second string behind Green with Gary Neal being injured also.
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