Flexible to the end, Rick Carlisle is acquiring a ton of information about his team during the great COVID-19 inconvenience of 2021.
Players who have been isolated for the past 10 days or so have started trickling back to the team, beginning with Jalen Brunson against the Raptors on Monday. At some point, perhaps on this three-game trip, Josh Richardson, Dorian Finnney-Smith, Maxi Kleber and Dwight Powell will follow.
But in their absence, Carlisle has mixed and matched players by necessity, and sometimes that’s the best way to gain intel on pairings and strategies that may be useful in the future.