OAKLAND — Steve Kerr went with the head fake.
On the starting roster turned in and put up on the stats board in Oracle Arena, James Michael McAdoo was listed as the starter. But just a couple of minutes later, the Warriors PR department announced that in reality Andre Iguodala was going to get the start.
With Draymond Green suspended for an accumulation of technicals – capped by contact below the belt with LeBron James in Game 4 — Steve Kerr has been compelled to juggle lineups for Game 5. He’s been forced to do that right out of the gate and start the one guy on their bench that comes closest to approximating Green’s diverse skill set.
Expect Iguodala to be on LeBron James from the opening tip.
Also, expect some unusual lineup combinations from the Warriors, ones that saw little court time together the past couple seasons.
“Yeah, we looked at some of (those lightly used combinations),” Kerr said before Game 5. “Sammy Gelfand, our analytics guy, looked at some of the combinations. But we have a pretty good feel of which players work well with others and that sort of thing, which combinations work.
“So we have an idea of what we’ll do tonight, but that always changes depending on the flow of the game and foul trouble and all of that. So we’ll see how it goes.”
Expect to see a fair amount of McAdoo, Shaun Livingston, Festus Ezeli and others off the bench. If the starting lineup doesn’t work, expect a quick change by Kerr.
The rest of the Warriors starting lineup remains the same — Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Harrison Barnes, and Andrew Bogut.
With Green out, Cavaliers head coach is going back to his regular starting lineup with Kevin Love out at the opening tip. Love struggles when the Warriors go small, but there will be less of that in Game 5 with Green out.
The Warriors are up 3-1 in the series and are using the suspension of Green as motivation to close the series out Monday night.