Play Zeller over Lee

[Chris22]

Zeller's size improves our interior defense.
I would like to see him ahead of Lee in the rotation.

[SHAQATTACK]

He has played a little bit better recently .  His attitude looks a lot better

[strokeracevt]

It appears to me that the Lee experiment is winding down and TZ getting more time. I can only hope all the Lee playing time was an effort to showcase hime for a potential midseason trade. TZ is clearly the better player with a lot more upside.

[BudweiserCeltic]

The main problem right now is not Lee vs Zeller, but Stevens fascination with going small is cutting potential minutes for these players in a rotation that was having trouble finding minutes for everyone as it is.

[Evantime34]

I think Jerebko should be playing over both.

[CroCorvus]

Tyler is playing less so that Danny could sign him for cheap.
We could use him as a backup C.
That way I would play Lee to showcase him.

[hwangjini_1]

The main problem right now is not Lee vs Zeller, but Stevens fascination with going small is cutting potential minutes for these players in a rotation that was having trouble finding minutes for everyone as it is.

maybe it is less this than his fascination with winning, which the celtics and their limited abilities are actually doing these days.

also, i think CBS is still experimenting with combinations of players. so we can expect different player combos to appear until they prove, over time, to not work.

[hagar55voa]

Playing Zeller ahead of Lee should have been done a long time ago...Zeller needs more playing time...

[CelticPride2016]

Stevens is a great NBA coach. He has proven that in two+ seasons.

Nonetheless, I think he does play some occasional politics with his players. It seems that because of his personal relationship with Zeller, Stevens feels it is easier to take him for granted. It could be the equivalent of how Doc seemed to be harder on Big Baby than other players. Brad values a team with all guys rooting for one another. I don't think Brad likes too much player friction due to their being logjams at specific positions. Think of when we got Brandan Wright. Brad did all he could to make all five bigs part of the rotation. Thankfully Wright got traded and that issue was alleviated.

This is really Danny's fault. It wasn't a mistake to roll the dice for Lee over Wallace. The mistake is in having too many bigs who are redundant.

This will not be a problem as long as the team keeps winning games.

I could be wrong, as this is obviously speculation.

It could be that Stevens doesn't want to upset the veteran in Lee, at least not this early into the 2015-16 regular season.

I found his recent injuries to be quite questionable. That was my knee-jerk reaction. It seemed as if we were finally at the point when Lee would swap places with Tyler. I see there is a new thread wondering if he's really injured, but I haven't read it yet.

Unless a player pulls a Bogans, Stevens is not going to stab such a player in the back. That's probably a good thing.

David Lee appears to be in denial. Otherwise, I doubt he'd be getting blocked so often with a lot of turnovers. If he's injured, then maybe his ceiling is higher than cynics like myself think.

The problem could come down to it's tough to teach old dogs new tricks and especially when they don't realize their skills have receded to a point which offsets any former ability to hide flaws.

[LooseCannon]

I see the first three bigs as Sullinger, Johnson, and Olynyk set in stone.

The fourth big role should be situational.

Crowder/Jerebko when smallball is called for.  This is probably the best option in many cases.
Lee when you need offense and/or rebounding and smallball isn't a good option.
Zeller by default when you need defense and smallball isn't a good option.

You re-sign Zeller if you can get a good contract, but he is not a long-term piece.  You don't trade him because you want to have a bench deep enough to have a useful replacement if a main rotation guy is injured.  Right now, advanced metrics have Lee as the clearly better player, so he should get more playing time.