Its not up to Doc to constantly get his #14 or #15 man minutes simply because when he is called upon to do his job he does it.
If JJJ is as good as Doc says he is, not what I say but what Doc says, there are many other coaches who would find ways to get him minutes. For example, when Boston suffered 3 double digit loses to Indy, Chicago and Indy, JJJ played a total of 5 minutes in those games. Other coaches would find a way to get a 1st round draft pick in his rookie season more than 5 combined minutes in 3 blowout losses.
And while it's a players job to always be ready, to suggest that it's a good idea for a coach to let a player rot away on the bench until needed in an emergency (especially if it's a young player who the coach praises for his potential) is just silly.
Mike
No its not silly. Its the reality of the NBA. You can't have 15 player rotations. If you were an NBA coach and tried that you would be fired immediately. It's a blatantly STUPID thing to do for any coach.
And, sorry to say, but JJJ has too many proven, excellent NBA PFs in front of him. He is accident insurance for this year.
And I really don't know how many times this has to be told to you Mike before it sinks in but during those early games, KG was out of shape and needed to be getting his time on the court for conditioning , regardless of the results.
Doc had two choices to make for what would be the overall greater benefit for this team this year in those games
1. Play KG and other vets their regular minutes, even though we are getting rolled, to get them in game shape so they start performing like we need them to, or
2. Sit and rest KG and Pierce and Bass because it is a blowout(much of the reason for the blowout being veteran's being out of shape) and give a rookie some garbage time run because he needs some playing time and some confidence even though that really is insignificant in our chances of trying to win a title this year.
Given that KG and Pierce started playing better and then the team turned things around, I think Doc did the right thing and continues to know how to run this team better than anyone who contributes to this blog.