Simple question for CF. If harden gets more seriously hurt while trying to play through a nagging/ questionable type injury ... Is it a fireable offense on the part of Mike Dantoni . My feelings are a pretty clear cut yes . I was furious that Harden played 20 minutes in the first half . I mean , that's even more than his normal rotation. So now , we have a guy nursing his own injury that is picking up slack for other players that are out. Harden had a pretty good stat line , but anyone watching the game could tell he was a step slow . Worse than that , he was favoring his injury a bit . When you compensate for an injured body part ... It puts everything else at a higher risk of injury . Harden in an elite athlete ... I am not . The staff said the knee was structurally sound and I am sure they are right . But was his probability of getting injured in this game not higher than in any "normal" game ? Heavy minutes on a B2B ... While nursing an injury . It seems like such an unecessary risk. And to top everything off ... Dantoni has firsthand experience of what happened last year when he wore James down and Trevor too . To those that say "harden is playing less minutes than last year" you are right . But dantoni isn't making changes on a big enough scale . Harden could play 20 minutes less over the course of the season and Mike could say " hey he played less mins than last year." It would be true ... But it wouldn't be enough. End of rant , Mike needs to do more to protect players ... ESPECIALLY given how good we look right now.
Don't think it would be a fire-able offense, but I would be more concerned with CP3 at this point given his history. I don't know what injury Harden is nursing, but I'm certain the training staff is 24/7 with Harden and CP3.
I trust the medical staff (actual doctors and professionals vs online critics offering medical opinions) when they tell Harden it won't get any worse. They are there to PROTECT Harden as he is our very important as well as very expensive franchise superstar. We are talking about the same staff that held CP3 out for as long as he did and then enforced a strict minutes restriction on MDA. You honestly think they wouldn't do the same for Harden if they thought it would increase the risk?
Harden decides whether or not to play. Not D'Antoni. Now... with that being said. D'Antoni decides whether or not to expand the lineup and he decided to run a 7-man lineup until the last half of the 4th quarter...
Our scrubs are too shity to play. Morey needs to make some upgrades to our depth. Black is barely playable, Brown/Williams/Qi/Onuaku/Weber/Jackson aren't playable currently, we also have 1 extra empty roster spot. That's basically 8 wasted roster spaces, considering Capela is our only young player we don't have the luxury to waste away 8 roster spaces. MDA is just trying to win, the players just want to win, you better believe Harden wanted to play those minutes tonight. It's on Morey.
Obviously you want to trust your players but... It shouldn't be that way . I know the NBA is a players league , and Harden is a superstar on top of that . But if Dantoni is going to be a championship caliber coach ... He needs to be able to either: A. convince harden not to play if he thinks it's a bad idea B. Put his foot down and sit him . No one is POP , but do you seriously think anyone has final say over him ? That's the golden standard . We are now in the upper echelon , it's time to start holding ourselves to it.
2nd you need to know a bit of medical science... i mean true medical science not what you think it is
