Hollinger: The 9 players I’ll be watching most closely in Orlando, starring Zion Eric Gordon, Rockets — An underrated key to Houston’s smallball strategy, Gordon, at his best, has the ability to defend bigger players using his lower-body strength on one end while raining 40-foot bombs at the other. Alas, Gordon has not been at his best for some time. Submitting his entry for “worst season ever by somebody who had a 50-point game,” Gordon suffered through a miserable start before undergoing knee surgery, seemed to come back on the strength of a torrid weeklong stretch in late January that included his 50-spot in Utah, and then … went right back to being terrible. Gordon played 10 games after his half-century explosion. In those games he tried 86 3-pointers and made … 20 of them. Yikes. Overall, Gordon submitted a career-low 37.0 percent shooting mark (that’s on all shots, not 3s), and a meager 10.5 PER. The advanced stats suggest his defense slipped quite a bit, too. Additionally, the Rockets’ lack of size has exposed them as a weak defensive rebounding side, and Gordon hurts them here even at his best – his rebound rates have always been among the lowest in basketball. Among players who played at least 500 minutes this season, only Cleveland’s Darius Garland and Oklahoma City’s Terrance Ferguson corralled misses less often than Gordon’s paltry 3.5 percent rate. Can he get back to his level of a year ago (or that glorious week in January, for that matter?). Houston’s long-shot title hopes may hinge on it. Donte DiVincenzo, Bucks Gary Trent Jr., Blazers Kentavious Caldwell-Pope, Lakers Marvin Bagley III, Kings Jayson Tatum, Celtics and OG Anunoby, Raptors Justise Winslow, Grizzlies
