What do you think the effect will be of Harden and PJ's high minutes ?

Harden is currently averaging 38 minutes per game trending up
Tucker is around 36 and also trending up

They are both in the top 10 for minutes per game, they are the only players age 30 or above on the top 10 list.

Do you think these types of loads are sustainable throughout the course of the season ? If not, what needs to be done to bring them down ?

Will there be adverse effects ? Positive effects ? No effects ?

Could we still win games if we reduced the load ?

Personally, I hope getting Gordon backs gives MDA an option he is comfortable with and will let harden stay on the bench longer. Still , gordon has been injury prone ... and if rivers or WB need to take games off then we all know who is going to pick up the slack. Can MDA run all 4 guards ?

The one im more worried about is PJ , hes 34 and has now become our backup center in addition to starting PF. I have hope that gordon can play the "3" when he comes back and we shift to give house some minutes a the "4" which could give PJ more of a break.

But now PJ backs up Clint too. MDA has a tight leash with both tyson and hartenstein and clark ( when he plays at the 5)

You can argue we need better players , I would argue that if you dont play the players you have then the good ones you do have are gonna fall apart.

So far james and PJ have been tanks, but you never wanna push too hard.

This is just an exasperating and worrying trend to me . It feels like every other contender ( for this year and the past few) is always in a better position to go into the playoffs fresh and with more in the tank. The answer to minutes reduction we've seen so far is " get a Blowout" , but i would ask how do you get a blowout ? generally its by turning up the intensity and dominating on D while hitting your shots .... the defensive effort requires energy , energy you might not have if you are being asked to play close to 40 minutes a night. It feels like there is no way out , and I feel like if we cant find a way out then our success in the payoffs becomes less and less likely.

 

Bro , i might too.

What can i say, I'm a worrier.

It just feels like , as an organization, we dont care about this, like MDA hasn't learned his lesson from when we fell apart in 16-17.

The number of teams that participate in load management is greater than the ones that don't. And by and large they have been the teams with the most success. The only way we ever give guys nights off is if they recently surgery in the offseason or if they are legit OUT. In CP3's case the first year we got him we were careful with him , partially because he has a history of injury. Then last year, we decided to reverse our decision and play him on B2B's ... and he got hurt the first game doing that.

I just don't get it.

What will it take for us to be proactive ?

Do we really think that these minutes have little to no effect ?

 

How does his injury in game 1 matter when deciding on whether or not to play him back to backs ? He didn't look right in that first game and we gave him time off to sit. Furthermore we rested him like 5 of the last 10 games of the season

In season 2 i was wrong , after more carefully looking at game logs he DID play B2B's before the one in which he got injured . But he did suffer an injury on the B2B on 12/19 - 12/20

Regardless of our resting strategy CP3 got hurt in the playoffs year 1 and not year 2 .. Do you think this invalidates any proactive resting ? Are injuries just totally random ?

Do you think that Cp3 was a better playoffs in year 1 vs year 2 ? If so , is the decline solely due to age or do you think that the staff was able to prime him better for the playoffs ( resting 5/10 games down the stretch ? )

 

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