Man, I hope he doesn't stay there long. Nothing against Thibs personally, but unless he's learnt from past mistakes, he's going to run those young guys into the ground.
Seeing Luol Deng, Joakim Noah, Derrick Rose and even to an extent Jimmy Butler get ground down by Thibs' insistence they play near 40 minutes has always made me a bit sad about the waste.
Such a crazy notion to expect a player to play most of a game. It’s not like they are elite athletes or anything. I guess expecting them to play more than 75% of a game is a stretch.
I could understand easing up on the second of a B2B or watching minutes for someone 35 years old, but I hate the idea that a young player playing more than 33mpg is abuse. Just 10-15 years ago playing upwards of 40 a night was normal for stars.
It’s not simply about the minutes. Thibs’ coaching style just flies in the face of the developments sports science has made over the last few years. Dating back to 2011, 5 of his regular starters (Deng, Rose, Butler, Lavine, Noah) suffered repeat injuries, and all of them were being pushed to the limit.
Nobody is stating that it’s “abuse”, it’s just stupid. Stars might have been playing that much, but their careers were routinely being cut short. Guys with bodies McGrady, Stoudemire, Wade, Hardaway and Baron Davis (believe me, I could go on) didn’t have bodies suited to playing that much, but the notion was that stars have to play that much, as you say. And it butchered their careers, or at least seasons within their careers.
Guys like Rose & Griffin are still able to be in the league because the ideas regarding stars have changed. Personally, I think that’s a good thing