Forget about winning, just play the entire bench

[Jon]

I don't have stats to back it up but it seems that the best regular season team very often wins the title in the NBA.  In baseball and football, it seems like a wild card team can get hot and win it all.  I further don't think that playing 32 minutes average vs 36 minutes average will meaningfully lessen the risk of injury.

I say play every game to win, stick to reasonable rotations, and everything will be fine.  If we are healthy, look out.  Injuries can derail any team but I don't think we will lose in the playoff because Pierce tired from playing 36 min instead of 32.  If someone is nursing an injury, then rest them to get 100% healthy but if they are healthy, play 'em and expect them to play hard.

Exactly.  And the problem last year wasn't that Pierce and Allen played 36 mpg, it was that they started playing more than that when KG went down.  Moreover, they were asked to do more.  I mean you figure that while Ray has plays run for him throughout a game, sometimes he's just the weakside shooter when the C's go to the 2 on 2 or 3 on 3 game.  That was happening less once KG went down.

Next year, if they can keep them at 35 or so mpg or less, I think everything's going to be fine.  And there's no reason they can't do that.  Daniels could handle all that time behind himself.  Moreover, I think the time the Big Three spend on the court will be less stressful on their bodies than in the past as they'll be asked to do less as Wallace, Daniels, and Rondo pick up some of the scoring load. 

[Tai]

These guys play basketball for a living.  30-40 minutes a night is no problem for these guys.

Yes, but a lot of them take their physical health/stamina for granted. I mean think about it... how many times have you worked for a company which was simply fighting fires, instead of planning ahead to prevent them?

Honestly, despite what everyone here says, NBA players, on the average do not have a personal program like John Stockton or Kareem Abdul Jabbar. The reason why those two guys lasted into their early to mid-forties was consistent workout and a diet regimen. For them, esp when they were less than 35 years of age, playing 30+ mins a night was nothing. Kareem had both a yoga and martial arts regimen, he was both flexible and had a lot of endurance. I suspect that a lot of NBA players sip on a few Sam Adams and Jack Daniels, from time to time, but unlike a lot of us in corporations, we don't need to run around for our livelihood so it really doesn't affect us except in the long run.

If that's true about Kareem than hell yeah to him.

Still, I don't know what's the point of being down by 10-12 going into the 4th solely for the development of the bench. If our starters only average 36 MPG or less in the season, than you're pretty much saying they're sitting out a whole quarter per game.  Realize that doesn't even include TV timeouts, 20-second timeouts, and of course halftime. Despite the sucky bench we had last year, Doc seemed to be doing a good job of limiting the starting 5's minutes to less than 36 MPG. Now, we have Rasheed Wallace and Marquis Daniels to play off the bench along with Eddie House and Big Baby. That right there is a solid bench that, with a starter here and there, Doc can trust for a more significant amount of time than he could last year. Then, if the game's a blowout, that gives the starters more rest as we can throw out the human victory cigars in guys like TA, Scal, Giddens/Walker, etc.

Are you truly sure the Celtics can't win and cut their starters' minutes here and there at the same time? Personally, I think this topic by you was a sign of TOO much concern for you at best, and knee-jerky to what happened to KG last year at worst.

[Spoon]

I have a better idea. Let's just not play anyone. Nobody suits up. This way no one on the team will get hurt and everyone will be fresh for the post-season. We will run over all the tired teams. Genius! Oh wait...I forgot about that winning games in the regular season to make it to the post-season part. Crud. Back to the drawing board.

[BudweiserCeltic]

First because playing the starters heavy minutes also makes them take possessions off to keep their fatigue down (particularly defensively). Even with our starters playing a lot of minutes last year, we still found ourselves in a lot of close games. The problem here was that we were playing some "grueling" games, while at the same time our starters were dead tired.

Why do we have to play our starters "heavy" minutes?  As nick noted, prior to KG's injury both Pierce and Ray were averaging less than 36 minutes per game, meaning they were resting more than 25% of each game.  If Marquis Daniels allows each of them an extra 3 - 4 minutes of rest, I'm not sure that heavy minutes are a concern.

I don't think there will be any need to force feed the bench minutes.  Doc can play a nine man rotation that allows us to avoid burning out the starters while also winning games.  Beyond our top nine, I don't think there's any reason at all to force feed others minutes, except in garbage time.

Really didn't mean it that way. Was simply pointing out the consequences of the other side of the coin, playing the starters more minutes than they should. Quite aware of Doc handling the minutes quite well pre-injuries, but wanted to illustrate that he could've continued to do so after the injuries. Particularly, since playing our starters a lot of minutes don't guarantee easy wins (or wins for that matter). But, if you keep minutes in the right range, you'd at least have that regardless of the outcome.

Not saying that we would lose more games, but I think there's a flaw in the belief that one, overplaying our starters over a run of games really helps us win more games (as opposed to a normal range of minutes), and secondly that playing them less couldn't actually help us win more games (hence a flaw in the belief that playing Walker, for example, would've cost us games).

If minutes are well balanced, then we really have nothing to argue. And that's the keyword here, balance, regardless of the situation, there has to be balance. During some stretches you play the starters more, sometimes less, but never go to the extent that Doc went last year particularly with players that are of "that" age.

This coming season I don't forsee it being a problem though, I think Doc has learned his lesson, and more importantly we have enough players that Doc can play without much reservation.

[nickagneta]

First because playing the starters heavy minutes also makes them take possessions off to keep their fatigue down (particularly defensively). Even with our starters playing a lot of minutes last year, we still found ourselves in a lot of close games. The problem here was that we were playing some "grueling" games, while at the same time our starters were dead tired.

Why do we have to play our starters "heavy" minutes?  As nick noted, prior to KG's injury both Pierce and Ray were averaging less than 36 minutes per game, meaning they were resting more than 25% of each game.  If Marquis Daniels allows each of them an extra 3 - 4 minutes of rest, I'm not sure that heavy minutes are a concern.

I don't think there will be any need to force feed the bench minutes.  Doc can play a nine man rotation that allows us to avoid burning out the starters while also winning games.  Beyond our top nine, I don't think there's any reason at all to force feed others minutes, except in garbage time.

Really didn't mean it that way. Was simply pointing out the consequences of the other side of the coin, playing the starters more minutes than they should. Quite aware of Doc handling the minutes quite well pre-injuries, but wanted to illustrate that he could've continued to do so after the injuries. Particularly, since playing our starters a lot of minutes don't guarantee easy wins (or wins for that matter). But, if you keep minutes in the right range, you'd at least have that regardless of the outcome.

Not saying that we would lose more games, but I think there's a flaw in the belief that one, overplaying our starters over a run of games really helps us win more games (as opposed to a normal range of minutes), and secondly that playing them less couldn't actually help us win more games (hence a flaw in the belief that playing Walker, for example, would've cost us games).

If minutes are well balanced, then we really have nothing to argue. And that's the keyword here, balance, regardless of the situation, there has to be balance. During some stretches you play the starters more, sometimes less, but never go to the extent that Doc went last year particularly with players that are of "that" age.

This coming season I don't forsee it being a problem though, I think Doc has learned his lesson, and more importantly we have enough players that Doc can play without much reservation.

Exactly what lesson did Doc learn? given similar circumstances this year Doc will once again lean on vets to win games if one of his Big Three goes down. Will it be to the extent that it happened last year? Who knows. We don't know who will be healthy and who won't.

In February, Scal, Tony Allen, and KG missed major time with all three being out by month the middle of the month and Doc didn't have Moore or Marbury until the last game or so of that month. When March came around Big Baby went down for a week and when he returned Powe joined the injured list and basically went out for the remainder of the year.

So to win games in february and March Doc needed to rely on

Rondo
Perkins
R Allen
Pierce
House
Davis

and worked without for the most part

Garnett
Scalabrine
T.Allen
Powe

while trying to use this as his bench

Pruitt - passive second rounder who got into personal problems
Moore - horrible big man that was clueless on defense
Marbury - out of shape former star that hadn't play NBA basketball in a year and a half
Walker - second round rookie who knew how to dunk and nothing else
Giddens - late first round rookie who could do less than Walker


What lesson needed to be learned? Don't do what you are paid to do(win games) by relying on players you know you can rely on to win games. My guess is he was expecting his injured players back and never expected them to be out the length of time they were going to be or that Moore and Marbury and the rest of his bench was going to play as bad as they did.

[BudweiserCeltic]

First because playing the starters heavy minutes also makes them take possessions off to keep their fatigue down (particularly defensively). Even with our starters playing a lot of minutes last year, we still found ourselves in a lot of close games. The problem here was that we were playing some "grueling" games, while at the same time our starters were dead tired.

Why do we have to play our starters "heavy" minutes?  As nick noted, prior to KG's injury both Pierce and Ray were averaging less than 36 minutes per game, meaning they were resting more than 25% of each game.  If Marquis Daniels allows each of them an extra 3 - 4 minutes of rest, I'm not sure that heavy minutes are a concern.

I don't think there will be any need to force feed the bench minutes.  Doc can play a nine man rotation that allows us to avoid burning out the starters while also winning games.  Beyond our top nine, I don't think there's any reason at all to force feed others minutes, except in garbage time.

Really didn't mean it that way. Was simply pointing out the consequences of the other side of the coin, playing the starters more minutes than they should. Quite aware of Doc handling the minutes quite well pre-injuries, but wanted to illustrate that he could've continued to do so after the injuries. Particularly, since playing our starters a lot of minutes don't guarantee easy wins (or wins for that matter). But, if you keep minutes in the right range, you'd at least have that regardless of the outcome.

Not saying that we would lose more games, but I think there's a flaw in the belief that one, overplaying our starters over a run of games really helps us win more games (as opposed to a normal range of minutes), and secondly that playing them less couldn't actually help us win more games (hence a flaw in the belief that playing Walker, for example, would've cost us games).

If minutes are well balanced, then we really have nothing to argue. And that's the keyword here, balance, regardless of the situation, there has to be balance. During some stretches you play the starters more, sometimes less, but never go to the extent that Doc went last year particularly with players that are of "that" age.

This coming season I don't forsee it being a problem though, I think Doc has learned his lesson, and more importantly we have enough players that Doc can play without much reservation.

What lesson needed to be learned? Don't do what you are paid to do(win games) by relying on players you know you can rely on to win games. My guess is he was expecting his injured players back and never expected them to be out the length of time they were going to be or that Moore and Marbury and the rest of his bench was going to play as bad as they did.

I was under the impression that his main job was to coach a championship team, not merely win some games during the regular season. This is why often you see someone like Pop giving some of his players days off, even when his stars have had injuries.

Secondly, it's quite alright to rely on your main guys to get the job done, but once again, there has to be a balance. And again, I can still argue that overplaying the starters can be a detriment to win games themselves. At most, Pierce and Ray should've played 38 minutes a game during the stretch. There are plenty of times to insert some of these "unprepared" players during games and sneak in a couple of minutes of rest for your main guys. It's really not that hard, Doc's coaching style simply doesn't allow that to happen often.

During a stretch Pierce played 7 games in a row over 40 minutes. If you don't see anything wrong with that, I don't know what else to tell you. During that stretch we went 4-3, so was it worth it? Did he really help us win games? If he was a bit more rested during that stretch, would've played better and improve our chances of winning more games? Those are very valid arguments, which you simply dismiss as "playing Walker, etc. would've cost us games", when with Marbury and Mikki playing as bad as they were for us, we still went 17-6 or some crap like that.

[mgent]

First because playing the starters heavy minutes also makes them take possessions off to keep their fatigue down (particularly defensively). Even with our starters playing a lot of minutes last year, we still found ourselves in a lot of close games. The problem here was that we were playing some "grueling" games, while at the same time our starters were dead tired.

Why do we have to play our starters "heavy" minutes?  As nick noted, prior to KG's injury both Pierce and Ray were averaging less than 36 minutes per game, meaning they were resting more than 25% of each game.  If Marquis Daniels allows each of them an extra 3 - 4 minutes of rest, I'm not sure that heavy minutes are a concern.

I don't think there will be any need to force feed the bench minutes.  Doc can play a nine man rotation that allows us to avoid burning out the starters while also winning games.  Beyond our top nine, I don't think there's any reason at all to force feed others minutes, except in garbage time.

Really didn't mean it that way. Was simply pointing out the consequences of the other side of the coin, playing the starters more minutes than they should. Quite aware of Doc handling the minutes quite well pre-injuries, but wanted to illustrate that he could've continued to do so after the injuries. Particularly, since playing our starters a lot of minutes don't guarantee easy wins (or wins for that matter). But, if you keep minutes in the right range, you'd at least have that regardless of the outcome.

Not saying that we would lose more games, but I think there's a flaw in the belief that one, overplaying our starters over a run of games really helps us win more games (as opposed to a normal range of minutes), and secondly that playing them less couldn't actually help us win more games (hence a flaw in the belief that playing Walker, for example, would've cost us games).

If minutes are well balanced, then we really have nothing to argue. And that's the keyword here, balance, regardless of the situation, there has to be balance. During some stretches you play the starters more, sometimes less, but never go to the extent that Doc went last year particularly with players that are of "that" age.

This coming season I don't forsee it being a problem though, I think Doc has learned his lesson, and more importantly we have enough players that Doc can play without much reservation.

What lesson needed to be learned? Don't do what you are paid to do(win games) by relying on players you know you can rely on to win games. My guess is he was expecting his injured players back and never expected them to be out the length of time they were going to be or that Moore and Marbury and the rest of his bench was going to play as bad as they did.

I was under the impression that his main job was to coach a championship team, not merely win some games during the regular season. This is why often you see someone like Pop giving some of his players days off, even when his stars have had injuries.

Secondly, it's quite alright to rely on your main guys to get the job done, but once again, there has to be a balance. And again, I can still argue that overplaying the starters can be a detriment to win games themselves. At most, Pierce and Ray should've played 38 minutes a game during the stretch. There are plenty of times to insert some of these "unprepared" players during games and sneak in a couple of minutes of rest for your main guys. It's really not that hard, Doc's coaching style simply doesn't allow that to happen often.

During a stretch Pierce played 7 games in a row over 40 minutes. If you don't see anything wrong with that, I don't know what else to tell you. During that stretch we went 4-3, so was it worth it? Did he really help us win games? If he was a bit more rested during that stretch, would've played better and improve our chances of winning more games? Those are very valid arguments, which you simply dismiss as "playing Walker, etc. would've cost us games", when with Marbury and Mikki playing as bad as they were for us, we still went 17-6 or some crap like that.

Maybe we would've gone worse than 4-3 during that stretch, you never really know.  Doc played Pierce that much for a reason, and I don't think that's grounds to say he's not doing his job correctly.

Within reason, I think it's perfectly okay to overplay guys if it turns losses into wins.  If Doc thinks that's best, who are we to disagree?

[nickagneta]

First because playing the starters heavy minutes also makes them take possessions off to keep their fatigue down (particularly defensively). Even with our starters playing a lot of minutes last year, we still found ourselves in a lot of close games. The problem here was that we were playing some "grueling" games, while at the same time our starters were dead tired.

Why do we have to play our starters "heavy" minutes?  As nick noted, prior to KG's injury both Pierce and Ray were averaging less than 36 minutes per game, meaning they were resting more than 25% of each game.  If Marquis Daniels allows each of them an extra 3 - 4 minutes of rest, I'm not sure that heavy minutes are a concern.

I don't think there will be any need to force feed the bench minutes.  Doc can play a nine man rotation that allows us to avoid burning out the starters while also winning games.  Beyond our top nine, I don't think there's any reason at all to force feed others minutes, except in garbage time.

Really didn't mean it that way. Was simply pointing out the consequences of the other side of the coin, playing the starters more minutes than they should. Quite aware of Doc handling the minutes quite well pre-injuries, but wanted to illustrate that he could've continued to do so after the injuries. Particularly, since playing our starters a lot of minutes don't guarantee easy wins (or wins for that matter). But, if you keep minutes in the right range, you'd at least have that regardless of the outcome.

Not saying that we would lose more games, but I think there's a flaw in the belief that one, overplaying our starters over a run of games really helps us win more games (as opposed to a normal range of minutes), and secondly that playing them less couldn't actually help us win more games (hence a flaw in the belief that playing Walker, for example, would've cost us games).

If minutes are well balanced, then we really have nothing to argue. And that's the keyword here, balance, regardless of the situation, there has to be balance. During some stretches you play the starters more, sometimes less, but never go to the extent that Doc went last year particularly with players that are of "that" age.

This coming season I don't forsee it being a problem though, I think Doc has learned his lesson, and more importantly we have enough players that Doc can play without much reservation.

What lesson needed to be learned? Don't do what you are paid to do(win games) by relying on players you know you can rely on to win games. My guess is he was expecting his injured players back and never expected them to be out the length of time they were going to be or that Moore and Marbury and the rest of his bench was going to play as bad as they did.

I was under the impression that his main job was to coach a championship team, not merely win some games during the regular season. This is why often you see someone like Pop giving some of his players days off, even when his stars have had injuries.

Secondly, it's quite alright to rely on your main guys to get the job done, but once again, there has to be a balance. And again, I can still argue that overplaying the starters can be a detriment to win games themselves. At most, Pierce and Ray should've played 38 minutes a game during the stretch. There are plenty of times to insert some of these "unprepared" players during games and sneak in a couple of minutes of rest for your main guys. It's really not that hard, Doc's coaching style simply doesn't allow that to happen often.

During a stretch Pierce played 7 games in a row over 40 minutes. If you don't see anything wrong with that, I don't know what else to tell you. During that stretch we went 4-3, so was it worth it? Did he really help us win games? If he was a bit more rested during that stretch, would've played better and improve our chances of winning more games? Those are very valid arguments, which you simply dismiss as "playing Walker, etc. would've cost us games", when with Marbury and Mikki playing as bad as they were for us, we still went 17-6 or some crap like that.

Play Pierce just 36-38 minutes in that stretch and we could have gone 0-7. In that 7 game stretch those three losses were to the Lakers by 1 at home, and the Spurs by 6 at home  and Utah on the road by 5. Had they not been playing 3 of the best teams in the league, Doc's strategy during that time could very well have had the Celtics going 7-0 in that time frame. Those seven games were also during the very, very beginning of the time when Doc started relying on his vets because of injuries so at the time Pierce was still fresh because up until that time he was averaging less than 36 MPG.

It's easy to state what you did without looking at the realities of what was happening at the time but Doc didn't know in early February that Scal, Powe, KG and Allen were going to become season long scratches at some point.

Your Monday morning QBing is making it out to seem that at the time Doc was doing something wrong when clearly, given what the circumstances were at the time and what Doc knew at the time, your premise is completely wrong.


And last I checked, to win championships, one must win games. By mid March and April and May Doc was trying to win games with Mikki Moore as his primary big off the bench, with no back up wing with any skill or experience and without the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and his best player.

Stop acting like Doc lost the championship because he didn't have balance in his substitution of rookies that might not have an ounce of real NBA talent in them to give Pierce and Allen rest. Without KG the team was not winning a championship.

[star18]

For KG, Paul, Ray & Sheed it is worth it to get them rest.    KG just of the injury.  Ray 33, Sheed 34, & Paul was tired end of last year.  In the game I saw them play at NJ in March Paul was exhausted coming off the court end of the game, he was way more tired than any other player.

The thing is when we have big leads against mediocre teams, many times Doc leaves Paul & Ray out there like he is so happy and wants to keep the fans happy by celebrating by winning and having the best guys on the floor.   That is what I do not agree with.  Just because you are up 26 against the Knicks doesn't mean all the starters stay in near the end of the game to celebrate because we are winning and have a great team.    The season isn't over in a 26 point win against the Knicks.  We are not going to clinch a championship victory being up 26 points at the end of the game.   Sit the stars early, just because we have an impressive regular season win doesn't mean we leave everybody out there like we are celebrating the team's good fortune. 

Also against half the league it is reasonable to say that with our starting 5 playing the first half, play them 5 minutes in the 3rd, then put all the subs in even if it is a relatively close game.   See if they can finish the game and get the victory.  You don't need to be up by 25 to rest the starters, if you are up 5 and have been leading the whole game take a chance and let the subs finish it out.  8 times out of 10 we are going to win that game anyway.  No sense having the Big 4 play an extra 10+ minutes each for those 10 games to get an extra 2 wins.   

[BudweiserCeltic]

Play Pierce just 36-38 minutes in that stretch and we could have gone 0-7. In that 7 game stretch those three losses were to the Lakers by 1 at home, and the Spurs by 6 at home  and Utah on the road by 5. Had they not been playing 3 of the best teams in the league, Doc's strategy during that time could very well have had the Celtics going 7-0 in that time frame. Those seven games were also during the very, very beginning of the time when Doc started relying on his vets because of injuries so at the time Pierce was still fresh because up until that time he was averaging less than 36 MPG.

Sorry, it was a bit of a trick. During that span we still had KG. And although those games against the Lakers, Spurs, and Utah were quite justiable for the minutes played because of the opponnent we were playing, there's really little reason to justify playing 7 games in a row at that ammount of minutes when you had the Hornets (who weren't that good last year) and the Knicks. Even so, it was February... we're on the later half of the season, and it's when you have to manage minues more painstackingly.

It's easy to state what you did without looking at the realities of what was happening at the time but Doc didn't know in early February that Scal, Powe, KG and Allen were going to become season long scratches at some point.

Of course he didn't know, but you still have to be prepared for it. Again, 7 games in a row for aging stars playing all those minutes it's hardly justifiable to me during any circumstance. It would be different if this was early in the season, but this was quite late in the season.

Your Monday morning QBing is making it out to seem that at the time Doc was doing something wrong when clearly, given what the circumstances were at the time and what Doc knew at the time, your premise is completely wrong.

No Monday morning QB'ing going on in here. This sentiments where expressed at the time they were occuring, to the point that Pierce himself came out a number of times saying that the coaches needed to find ways to rest him more and Doc himself came out that he needed to find ways to rest him, he simply failed at doing so.

And last I checked, to win championships, one must win games.

Just not all of them, and not at any cost particularly at the expense of the health and energy of those you will have to rely on when it really counts. And as I said quite a few times already, you can make the case that by resting them more during games we would've had a chance to win more games... particlarly because it optimizes their time on the floor. Could we have lost more? Sure... how many? One or two? We can't say. I only can say that whatever benefits we gained by playing Pierce and Ray the ammount they didn't outweight the cost.

By mid March and April and May Doc was trying to win games with Mikki Moore as his primary big off the bench, with no back up wing with any skill or experience and without the reigning Defensive Player of the Year and his best player.

Yet, Mikki and Marbury sucked, yet Doc kept going to them and we still won a lot of games. So, how big of an impact could playing Walker or Giddens a bit more would've had in the scheme of things (in wins and loses) when you're playing Mikki and Marbury who were quite bad. Sorry, I'm quite certain we could still win games with a more conservative approach.

What's funny is that even in some games when Pierce and Allen where having bad games, Doc still played them a ton of minutes. So, you might end up playing them a ton of minutes, in a game that they didn't play well, in a losing effort. The trifecta.

Stop acting like Doc lost the championship because he didn't have balance in his substitution of rookies that might not have an ounce of real NBA talent in them to give Pierce and Allen rest. Without KG the team was not winning a championship.

Stop putting words in my mouth. I've never said that Doc cost us the championship. We could've won the championship without KG though. It would've been quite hard, but quite doable. A tired Pierce and Allen didn't help matters. But as I've said in the past, I put a lot of the blame on the players themselves for the underperformance, and that Chicago series really killed us. But, it was still a poor decision for Doc to play Pierce the amount he did.

And I love Doc as a coach, I've been defending him for years. I simply think he did a very bad choice in this regard.

I can't say it enough. Balance is key.

[Tai]

I notice early in the year we only had a 9 man rotation with Scal pretty much never playing. Now, we have a 9 man rotation that doesn't even include Scal, TA, Giddens, Walker, or Williams. Use two of those guys, and that's an 11-man rotation.

I think we'll be fine in terms of minutes this year.

[nickagneta]

Budweiser you keep calling Pierce an aging veteran. He's 31.

Were you aware that in February and March of 1998 that Phil Jackson played a 34 year old Michael Jordan 42, 39, 42, 43, 39, 47, and 42 minutes in 7 consecutive games and still won a championship? Or that Jackson played a 34 year old Jordan nearly 39 MPG and a 32 year old Pippen nearly 38 MPG and was still able to win the championship?

Were you aware that in 1995 Rudy Tomjonovich played Hakeem Olajawon over 40 minutes in 10 of 12 games in late February and early March and still won a championship? Hakeem was 32 years old that year.

Doc did nothing wrong and you routinely throw out that the Celtics might not have lost any more games. I just don't follow that logic at all. if you aren't playing your best players and keeping game continuity, how exactly are you supposed to win by playing much, much, much worse players for those star player? I'm just going to leave it there. I just think it's real easy to look at what happened and criticize it now. But at the time, he did well to get the results he did.

BTW, Doc's and Pierce's comments about finding ways to get Pierce and Allen less minutes happened in March so they weren't actually admitting that Doc was doing anything wrong at the time of Pierce's 40 game streak. It was only after 5-6 weeks of using him big minutes because of extended time out of the injured players and them not coming back and the realization that they weren't coming back anytime soon that the comments came out.

As for Marbury and Moore. They were awful. But they wouldn't have been completely incompetent, which is exactly what Walker and Giddens would have been. And once again, young players have to earn minutes, not be given them for the reason to save a world class star basketball player, who is only 31 years old, an extra 2-4 minutes rest.

[TitleMaster]

Were you aware that in 1995 Rudy Tomjonovich played Hakeem Olajawon over 40 minutes in 10 of 12 games in late February and early March and still won a championship? Hakeem was 32 years old that year.

Hakeem's MVP career was over, come the '96-'97 season, only a year and a half from the title run, due to all the minutes he'd logged thus incurring more wear & tear than any big man before him. All and all, if you want Pierce to last till the end of his era, you don't want him to be that person for the C's and fortunately, given the fact that we have a bench, it should never have to come to that.

[nickagneta]

Were you aware that in 1995 Rudy Tomjonovich played Hakeem Olajawon over 40 minutes in 10 of 12 games in late February and early March and still won a championship? Hakeem was 32 years old that year.

Hakeem's MVP career was over, come the '96-'97 season, only a year and a half from the title run, due to all the minutes he'd logged thus incurring more wear & tear than any big man before him. All and all, if you want Pierce to last till the end of his era, you don't want him to be that person for the C's and fortunately, given the fact that we have a bench, it should never have to come to that.

So even though Hakeem was averaging 18.9 points and 9.7 rebounds per game 4 years after that championship year at the age of 36, his career was over, huh? It never occurred to you that most NBA players, even superstars, start to fall off and not average the same amount of games played and points scored and rebounds gotten after age 34? That come 34 years old, most NBA players careers are actually really over and not just coming to the end of their peak years? Hakeem's PER36 numbers were [dang] impressive until he was 38 years old. I wouldn't consider his career over at 34 given the numbers he put up thereafter.

I don't but your premise that Rudy ran him into the ground and burned him out early, sorry. The numbers just don't say that.

[TitleMaster]

It never occurred to you that most NBA players, even superstars, start to fall off and not average the same amount of games played and points scored and rebounds gotten after age 34? That come 34 years old, most NBA players careers are actually really over and not just coming to the end of their peak years? Hakeem's PER36 numbers were [dang] impressive until he was 38 years old. I wouldn't consider his career over at 34 given the numbers he put up thereafter.

Hakeem MVP career was over, not his career as a great all round star NBA player. Realize, his leg problems, esp related to his calves, started in that '96-'97 season. Before then, he was truly the most unstoppable big man alive and could play for massive stretches of time. Really, if the Rockets had wanted a three-peat, they should have just kept Horry, Cassell, and Smith, instead of trading for Barkley after the Hornets series, and they would have gotten it. With Clyde on board, they had a fine combination of an inside-out game which very few teams could compete with including the Bulls. Unfortunately, like Hakeem, Clyde's last great season was '95-'96, before his decline which coincided with Hakeem's physical problems.