If Doc, once KG and Powe and Scal went down, had addressed the team and said:
"Listen, we're going with the philososphy that the starters are going to play limited minutes, like tops of 30-35 per game, and we're just going to have to rely on Steph, Mikki, Billy, Eddie, and some of you other guys to pick up the slack. Doing this could mean we lose a lot more games and don't get the 2nd seed, but we will be fresh come playoff time when our starters are going to have to go 40 minutes per game each."
then I think he might have lost a bunch of respect amongst his starters. Pro athletes don't take well to losing on purpose by having good players sit on benches while lesser plyers are losing games. If after a couple of losses where Ray and Paul played only 30 minutes and JR Giddens and Bill Walker dah played 20 each, the starters didn't start to grumble about how they would't have lost if Doc let them play, I would be very surprised.
It's so easy to say play this one or that one and force these others to sit and who cares if we win. That's easy for us. But stars and pros don't see it that way. Guys like Perk and Rondo and Ray and Paul think they can go 45 minutes every night and through the playoffs and should. The last thing they are thinking is play me less so I can be rested later.
And yes, it is the job of the coach to take charge but it is also the job of the coach to win games and keep a healthy locker room and the respect of his players. Lose the locker room and you lose your job. It is that easy. If the Celtics lost 5-10 more games for the sole benefit of keeping Ray and Rondo and Perk and Paul rested for the playoffs, mentally they may not have been ready for the playoffs because they could have lost a ton of respect for Doc and Doc may have lost their ears and heads, so to say.
I think Doc did the best he could and I challenge any other coach in the league to say they could have won more games or gotten the Celtics any farther than Doc did. I doubt anyone would jump forward to say they could have. 62 wins and going to 7 games in the conference semi's to a team that , except for one unbelieveable shot, could have just swept the Cavs, is [dang] good. They beat a good young Bulls team that played them tough and a very good Magic team that played unreal perimeter defense.
I say, great job Doc, we'll get them next time when we have all our horses healthy. Don't worry about it, we did the best we could under the circumstances.
Funny because I remember Pierce saying time and time again that he needed to play less, that players like Walker should play more, and Doc kept telling that he needs to find ways to give him more rest, yet he always failed to.
It's all about balance... "losing a ton of more games" is quite a stretch.
It's one thing to say those words after playing yourself into the ground it's another to think you are going to need that rest beforehand.
Because you assume that as the season goes along, you'd start playing less to prepare for the playoffs. Which reminds me of last season, which was why I argued that the complaints of minutes were nonsense since I trusted Doc to give them appropiate minutes as the season ended. And he delivered. It didn't occur this season. It was quite understandable when they were playing for the best record of the league, that's quite important. But circumstances changed at it was quite evident that the Lakers and Cavs were going to be on top. There was plenty of time to start getting those minutes down. Again, balance is the key word here.
What I am saying is if he took that "we'll play scrubs and reserve the minutes of the starters" philosophy to the club ahead of time then the starters wouldn't have been happy, especially if that philosophy started costing them wins.
They weren't winning a whole lot anyways. And as I said above, you could argue that playing Pierce through some long stretches during games left him without gas towards the end, hence costing us games. It would be somewhat understandable at times when you players are hot, but Doc played them big minutes regardless of how well they were playing.
To come back at me with "but Doc said this and Paul said that" after Paul and Ray had already played two straight months of 40+ minutes is not exactly a fair counter argument in my mind. I didn't hear quotes of Paul saying when people went down that he still only needed to play X minutes because otherwise he would get too tired for the playoffs. My guess is that the attitude was what it always is when a major player goes down, the other major players think they had better tighten the bootstraps, be prepared for more monutes and everyone will work harder and longer to achieve the same goal. And when KG went down that goal was best overall record and the number one seed.
It simply shows a bit of shortsightedness and poor planning. As I said, if the goal is the number one seed AND you have a great chance of accomplishing it, go at it. But that was not the case when they started losing games and the Cavs were as hot as they were. When that occured there had to be a change in how hard you went about going after games. This doesn't mean you would lose a ton of games. It simply meant that you weren't going to overplay Ray and Pierce.
Anyways, this is all a moot point since I really don't blame Doc for not winning. I do criticize some of his poor decisions like this one and not giving someone like Walker more burn throughout the year, even if he wasn't going to be used in the playoffs.
As I said earlier, I blame the players more... but even so, I can't put much on them when you consider the circumstances and the injuries they were playing through. And that Chicago series was killer, and more damaging than any "rest" Doc might've given the players during the season. Still I think Doc was mistaken in playing them as hard as he did when it was quite evidend that the #1 seed was quite a stretch, that the team was fighting to get healthy, and going healthy and with energy should've been the #1 priority.
Topic: Did Doc cost us a championship by going for the 2nd seed? (Read 11516 times)