I do agree that Brooks is a mediocre coach at best, nothing special and I will not be surprised at all he got fired this year if OKC can't win it all. He is similar to McHale in terms of coaching reputation/value/ranking I guess. However, I will disagree that his management of the players minutes will be any factor for his firing - if eventually that will happen. Looking at Durant's career's stats of mins played : 07 (rookies year), 34.6 08 : 38.99 09 : 39.50 10 : 38.95 11 : 38.58 12 : 38.51 13 : 38.45 14 : 38.50 It is indeed very consistent, Brooks is right about his age, at 25, which is the prime of his career, there is no questions at all that he (Durant) should be able to handle this kind of minutes.
It's still a ridiculously foolish risk without any real upside. It makes more sense to give your bench players time, let Durant recharge and keep him off the floor. So he's 25, you say, "No big deal" but what happens if he ends up injured and misses play off games? Or isn't at 100% because he takes some bangs on the court that he didn't need to take? It's exactly that sort of dodgy logic that turns contenders into also rans and play off teams into lottery teams. Smart coaches look at the long run. Or at least think about play off implications. Brooks has made clear over several seasons that he's just not that smart when it comes to managing player health. And McHale with his, "They're not chopping wood" comments isn't much better. Just because your grandfather walked uphill in the snow both ways doesn't mean that it's smart to do it that way today. Great, your grandfather was tough... I'm still putting my kids on the bus.
more examples regarding the playing times : GS has a very strong backcourt pair like the Rockets and they are both young players : Cury and Thompson, and their playing time for the season is almost identical to Harden and Parsons. If you will like to argue that Harden's style of offense is more physical and attacking the rim often and that's why he should play less, well, then take a look at Kobe's stats, he's a much more aggressive player at the rim even than Harden in his prime. For his age of 21-29 in the league, his playing time was : 38.2, 40.9, 38.3, 41.5, 37.6, 40.7, 41, 40.8, 38.9 When you have a superstar in your team and he is young, you have to ride the horse. Everyone else did.
I am part of the minority who doesnt want Mchale fired. Unless we can get Pop/Doc which is impossible. I doubt there is any potential coach on earth that wont generate an "official fire coach" thread, its just how fandom is for better or worse. As long as he gets good effort from his players and they like playing for him then I'm all good with the coach.
Because at the end of the day you win or lose because of your players and not coaching. That's just how i see it. Can a coach lose you a game or win you a game, sure, but i think the impact is far less then people think. IMO
You're really going to use the example of one of the most freakishly durable players in NBA history playing between the years of 2000 and 2005 when advanced health data didn't even exist? Sure, they got away with it with Kobe, but how many players played themselves right out of the NBA? In the light of current medical research regarding fatigue and injury? Sorry, but that still sounds foolish to me. That's like saying that your parents used to smoke and they lived to 80 so it's just fine for you to smoke too. Sure, maybe you get lucky and live to 80, but you're rolling the dice. Given the Rockets history of injury and the experience with Yao (who was played WAY too much between the NBA and China national teams), I would think that the top priority would be to ensure that you get to keep Harden and Parsons healthy and playing at a peak level as long as possible. Or maybe that's just me.
All this minutes talk and I think it's largely irrelevant. Some guys you can play a ton of minutes and it won't matter. Some guys you can limit minutes and they still get hurt. Some injuries are going to happen that have nothing to do with minutes. There is no one size fits all rule for every player.
Yao is a terrible example (considering his size, his position and his background)to be used for comparison with Harden and Parsons. You should know better on this. If you do not think Kobe is a good example to be used, use any current similar superstar in the same era and you still will see a similar pattern of how they have been used. Bottom line, playing 37-39 minutes per game for a season for any backcourt players is not a sin or crazy idea. Teams are doing it before and they are doing it now.
facing GS or POR isn't the issue here, the issue is the chance POR get HCA against us. If they have the chance to fall to the 6th, that means we secure the 4th already. I'm ok with that.
I agree that resting helps but the bottom line, he played Rondo 38 minutes a game and he was rarely out during those times. Would you blame it to bad coaching that he tore his ACL because of all the minutes? Guess who the coach was? I am sure he would have nothing to do with that because he has championship rings. Yes i did. And how many injuries have they had in the last 2 yrs? If it wasn't for Griffin's 36 min/game this year, we would be in 3rd place. Which goes to show you, that injuries are more attributed to luck than anything else. So from my interpretation, all the years that Doc played plus the years of coaching, he didn't realize that more minutes equates to more fatigue and he had to wait till this NEW set of analysis to change his ways? I guess it changed a bit as Blake is only playing approx 36 min/game and with CP3's injuries this year, he is still averaging 35 m/game. How accurate could that analysis be when... - you have a team that lost all of its starters due to trade and only had ONE player that played as a starter - a coach who has not coached 80% of his starters - Nevada had us winning 28 games and up'd it to 32 with the addition of the beard. - a team that has played together a whole year, became more familiar with the coach and team plays, then adds one of the most dominant big man in the world is only projected to win ONE more game than the previous? I have seen some of your posts and I view you as an intelligent person so I don't believe for one second that you honestly think that we would win 52 games last year. That is hogwash. We all want to get better but to say that Mchale is an average coach is not being fair especially when the criticism can be said of all the other great coaches. Especially if the great statistician/analyst of the game says he is doing a great job. I also agree that you should get a top shelf coach if you can get him. But how do we know if we don't already have one if you don't give him a chance to fail/succeed? When he started as a coach for this team, Parsons is the only one left of that original team and 2 yrs later after the team was dismantled, we are 4th in a highly competitive conference and possibly finishing with 55 wins. That is not average.
1. jesus christ the priority for a coach is to WIN games, so that fans like torocan wont call for them to be FIRED...The best part about all this is if McHale did sit Harden more and we lost lets say 3-6 more games this year torocan and the majority of low basketball IQ people would be saying he should be fired. 2. these guys have some of the best training staff people in the world working with them EVERY SINGLE DAY...If they were concerned at all they would hold the players out....Before they go into these games they are warmed up and stretched out properly by trained professionals in that field...they don't just hand them a basketball and say go play. After the games they talk to the staff about anything that is bothering them and its addressed and analyzed...before they are cleared to play again. 3. Look at tim duncans first 6 years in the league he averaged MORE minutes multiple years than Harden has and they won 2 championships during those 6 years...so it wasn't until after him and pop had that success and established a WINNING CULTURE that pop felt comfortable reducing his minutes... 5. Keep in mind this is Harden and McHales second year together and first year with a team that is even able to sniff contention....even though we have the second least experienced team in the league with an average of 2.7. Which i think and reasonable people should think is real impressive. 6. No coach in the history of the NBA has reduced minutes for any player under 26 who doesn't have a injury that in lingering or concerning and to expect someone to do that is just nit-picking a coach when they cant find anything else to b**** about. to use Yao as your example of why players shouldn't play as much loses some ground when you think about how Yao was 7-6 and people that tall are going to have more problems than the average NBA player. please don't pay attention to the idiots saying this. NONE of us can predict injuries they are bad luck stuff that happen.
Pythag W/L for last years Rockets team is going to be a little skewed because we absolutely brutalized some teams last year. What was it like, 45 points against the Jazz and 30-something points against the Warriors? Of course that is what good teams do but I think that particular team was an outlier.
No kidding.....We were one of the youngest teams to make the Playoffs EVER last year....We had first year starters in Harden, Lin, Asik and patterson to start the season...We didn't even get a training camp together! (we got Harden 4 days before the first game) people still want to complain it makes me laugh how dumb and unreasonable people can be regarding sports teams these days..
What you're also missing is that roster sizes were different prior to 2006. Prior to 2006 the roster limit was 12 players on the roster, 12 players dressed. Since then that has expanded to 12 players dressed, 15 on the roster. This has given coaches more flexibility in reducing player minutes. As for your examples, what you're missing is that playing higher minutes is a dying trend and has been trending downward steadily for the past 8 years. There are multiple reasons for this but part of it is the increasing education of coaching staffs. Per Jared Zwerling (ESPN, BR and former Knicks beat reporter) http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...stars-play-less-and-for-good-reason-heres-why This isn't theoretical. This isn't just a bunch of studies. This is a trend in the NBA where the smarter coaches are increasing rest on and off the court unless forced to play them (injury). The NBA is changing, and it's being spear headed by the smarter coaches and the smarter FO's. And gambling with your franchise players is a perfect example of short sighted thinking.
When you will check into the numbers and you should have a clear picture on whether the coaches are really gambling with their franchise players. In fact, managing a player's playing time may not be the head coach's sole decision but most likely will be a group of assistants doing their jobs together also. Comparing Harden and Parsons' minutes to Curry and Thompson's minutes, the pattern is extremely similar. All these players are playing very high minutes in the first 3 months of the season and their minutes had been dropped down the last couple months till now. Even in Harden's case, his minutes in the early months was about 38.5-39 while in Feb and March was average around 36.5, that's about 2 minutes drop off. Both Curry and Thompson were having the same move but their drop off were just bigger - that has much to do with their depth and injuries ect. Below is the stats for top 10 SG played minutes for this season. Just using DeRozan as an example for comparison, he is having a career year and he is as young as Harden and in his prime, playing 38.3 minutes is not a surprise at all. Check his stats for the last 2 years and he was average 35 & 36.7. As I said, when you have a star (especially a superstar), you have to ride the horse, everyone did. RK PLAYER TEAM GP MIN MPG 1 Jimmy Butler, SG CHI 63 2421 38.4 2 DeMar DeRozan, SG TOR 76 2914 38.3 3 James Harden, SG HOU 70 2653 37.9 4 Monta Ellis, SG DAL 80 2937 36.7 5 Gordon Hayward, SG UTAH 73 2650 36.3 6 Arron Afflalo, SG ORL 69 2471 35.8 Klay Thompson, SG GS 77 2756 35.8 8 Lance Stephenson, SG IND 76 2676 35.2 9 Goran Dragic, SG PHX 74 2590 35.0 10 Bradley Beal, SG WSH 69 2396 34.7
Conclusion: Phil "The Zen Master" Jackson is short sighted Premise: Average minutes of superstars when he was coaching... Bulls: 1991- MJ (37), Pip (36.8) 1992 - MJ and Pip (38.6) 1993- MH (39.3), Pip (38.6), Grant( 35.4) 1995(I'm back) - MJ (39.3) and Pip (38.2) 1996- MJ (37.7), Pip (36.7) 1997 - MJ (37.9), Pip (37.7), Rodman (35.4) 1998 - MJ (38.8), Pip (37.5), Rodman (35.7) Lakers: 2000- Shaq (40), Kobe (38.2) 2001- Kobe (40.1), Shaq (39.5). Fish (35.5) 2002- Kobe (38.3), Shaq (36.1) 2003- Kobe (41.5), Shaq (37.8) Give it up!!
1. There was no studies or research on rest/injury correlation during Phil's time in the 90's. Might as well compare to Wilt in the 60's. 2. The roster was only 12 men prior to 2006. He had no choice. The roster is now 15 players which gives you the ability to go deeper into your roster and line ups.
All I'd like is a coach who can get his team prepared to come out against scrub teams. It shouldn't really be too hard to ask.
If Warriors win their next four games then their record will be 52-30. If Portland beats Utah but loses to the Warriors then their record will be 52-29 when they face the Clippers. If the Clippers beat them then Warriors move up because they hold the tiebreaker. If Portland wins then they finish with 53-29 which is enough to overtake the Rockets for home-court if they lose out.
