I agree completely. Funny thing about this season - I am much more concerned about the win total/seeding than I have been for some time. Not to avoid anyone in the playoffs, just to reduce the grind.
this topic has been discussed numerous times. cutting 4 minutes per game each would save 32 minutes over 8 games and roughly 10 games over the course of the season. think of yao and tmac, 10 games fresher in the playoffs. what about injury? what if they took off 1 game after every 8 games? they would stand a much better chance of staying healthy.
My first reply so excited hehehe, anyhow. The main reason Yao & Tmac were playing those kinda minutes year after year, was because our lack of 3rd option and thin bench (also injuries occured cuz of this). I do not have to explain much with Ron and Barry problems are solved, i think both players have high BB IQ. Just let Adelman do what he does best, that is utilizing his players each game. The minutes will come down themselves.
not sure where you are disagreeing. Are you disagreeing with my comment "rest but it effects our seeding: i don't agree" or are you disagreeing when I say the "Spurs Way" backfired for them last year, and in previous years it was more about them having a stronger bench (if not the strongest) and knowing they had the best team, combined with 06-07 being the yr Dallas and Suns ran away from the field early wrt seeding and homecourt, so the Spurs may as well have rested. The Rockets strike me as a team that needs the regular season to prove to themselves they are the best team, not expecting to just turn it ON in the playoffs. smoothie, JVG played Yao the same mpg as Duncan. It didn't work. so imo, you might as well play Yao Adelman mpg, if he can handle it.
These questions might help.. would you rather have 2nd seed with a heavily played Yao and TMac? or 4th seed with a fresher Yao , TMac?
That's an interesting question. We do need them to be fit but the matchup is also important. A weaker 7th seed might be easier to deal with as compared to a tougher 5th seed.
I will be very disappointed if Adelman artificially lowers Yao/TMac's mpg resulting in another 4th/5th seed matchup when he could have played them the same as last year and grabbed the 2nd seed.
lousy? Manu Ginobli, Brent Barry, Ime Udoka, Kurt Thomas, and Matt Bonner are not lousy. In fact, they are the reason the spurs are able rest their starters. They all have great size, defense, and shooting range for their positions. Assuming Battier comes off the bench, i would consider their bench better than ours (although i think our starters are better). Even if you consider Ginobli a starter their bench is still more savvy most other teams. Unless Landry comes back and plays much better than he did towards the end of the season then i see no incentive for Adleman to drop our stars' minutes.
with artest on the team i imagine our big 3 to average about 30mpg, i see scola gettin more minutes than the big 3 cuz hes pretty durable and he can bang with a lot ppl. scola can average about 36. brent can take tmac's min while scola and deke can take yao's min, landry can split min with scola, and we dont have pg min issues.
Yao is the one who's minutes need limiting. He should have the NFL running back principle applied. Like how the more carries an rb gets the more they wear out, the more minutes Yao gets the more he's gonna have nothing left at the end. We want a stellar regular season, and this might be the year the Rockets should "go for it" full. But lets not forget Yao's year-long basketball activities. Can either say he's damaged before we even get him so might as well play him, or actually give his body time to rest as he should. Really he should follow the Ilgauskas way of 28 to 31 mins. Big Z's playing 75 games a year now. STILL, most of it depends on how good a bench the team has. Imagine 2 years ago McGrady playing 31 minutes and his "backup" Luther head playing 30.
HP, there might not be conclusive evidence playing less would prevent injuries. However, logic seems to suggest that the less you play, the less chance you have to injuries. No? And that doesn't even count the "wear-and-tear" factor. There is no guarantee of avoiding injuries, no matter how much you play. But if you play the probability, I would make my bet on playing less. That said, your point is well taken. Playing your stars less means fewer wins, which in turns means lower seeding. The debatable part is, which is more important, fresher stars or HCA in the playoffs? Adelman is not known for playing a large rotation. Even with his talented Portland and Sacramento teams, he played his top 6 or 7 players big minutes. So I doubt that he will rest Yao and TMac much more than last year. (Maybe TMac more because of a better backup in Barry and the addition of Artest.) Adelman's way of "resting" his stars is to spread the offensive load to make his stars' lives easier. In that sense, playing Yao 37 mpg under Adelman is probably not more than playing him 34 mpg under JVG.
What I'm disagreeing with is the Spurs way backfired because he didn't have the homecourt advantage. Homecourt is nice, but the team needs to be healthy and fresh going into the stretch. The spurs beat the suns and the hornets and lost to La. La was the best team, period. The Spurs didn't have the matchups to sustain against Lakers last year. Pop has been downsizing duncans minutes for the last few yrs because of the long playoffs runs. The rox have shown they're a good regular season team, but the injuries and the lack of a 3rd scorer has forced the coach to play tracy and Yao more. Now that Artest is here and Battier can now be the primary backup, it makes no sesnse for those 2 to play 37-38 mins. If the Rox make a good effort to get yao a good backup to combine with Yao, he's more effective playing 30-32 mins per night. Then when u hit the playoffs, you can turn their minutes up as needed. During the regular season, it makes little sense because they will have to beat good teams anyway.
statistically it's hard to see any difference, which doesn't help either of our cases. tell me why you think it didn't work.
if you play probabilities, what are you chances of winning the title from the 5th seed....from the 4th seed? If you are not planning on going for the title this year, then this discussion is moot...and we should not be comparing ourselves to the "Spurs Way." That's a good point. I'd agree with that. I'm assuming (read: hoping) Yao had some input on when he needed to go out, under both JVG and Adelman. This brings up another point though: Are Popovich's minutes like JVG's wrt how much energy it takes? Would Yao play 34 mpg smoothie, I'm just going by results...as JVG would say. btw: What do you think about Easy's point wrt Yao's mpg having the same wear/tear effect under both coaches. leebigez, yeah, we are disagreeing then. The Spurs failed to reach the Finals. That was their goal, and most everyone thought they'd do it. Had they had HCA, they probably would have made it. And the incessant ginobody nagging injury excuse (not to say you're doing it) further illustrates that holding his mpg down doesn't make a difference wrt to his rest and health, so you might as well go for HCA. Besides, Ginobody cannot sustain such a frenetic pace for 37-40mpg (can anyone?). Popovich prefers to keep him below normal mpg so he can play his style every minute he's on the court. If Ginobody changes his style to play less hard to get more mpg, he's simply not as effective. If he was, he'd play 37-40mpg in the playoffs, which he's never come close to doing.
We can agree to disagree HeyP. You're saying it failed because they lost to La, but even if they had the number 1 seed, they would have had to play La. During this run they have been on, they've had homecourt and lost, they didn't have homecourt and won. The best team always win in 7. The year Dallas went to the finals, they had homecourt and lost to Dallas. Their last title, they didn't have homecourt and won. It doesn't matter. All I know is tracy and yao playing 32mins vs 37 min equates to 10 less games a year. Now you can twist that around any way you want, but there isn't any scientist or basketball fan that can't tell that 10 less games isn't better on the body.
i am all for giving tmac and yao as much rest as possible. As possible. i think last year adeleman played guys early in the season though the game was at times out of reach just so players get more familiar with the system, thats not necessary anymore. i really hope this team gels and puts teams away early so they wont need to sweat it out at the end. and I think the bench is much better equipped this year to not lose substantial leads to a point where the starters need to be put back in. but i would want the highest seeding possible...its not just about HCA but its also you end up playing "weaker" teams in the playoffs. its not a coincidence that an eighth seed made the finals just once and the lowest seed to ever win a title was a 6th seed. You just face tougher and tougher opponents. the higher seed you are the better you have it in the playoffs. Face it the rockets haven't had playoff success in over a decade they need the path of least resistance to get to the finals. People can saw all they want that health is the key and it doesnt matter where the team is seeded as long as they have health. Thats really foolish if you ask me, health+favorable seeding is the rockets' best chance to get to the finals. If that means having to play tmac, yao and whoever in games during the last week of the season then you do it (unless your seeding is already locked into place) injuries can happen at anytime anywhere while playing less helps you chance of not getting injured its not by a significant portion since injuries just happen they dont wait and go "well tracy has played a total of 500 minutes now lets go and mess up his knee" so i am in the camp of play as many minutes/games as needed to get the #1 seed (or highest seed possible)
I know the thread starter's point is the "Spurs way." But I don't really care about how the Spurs did. Last year we had HCA and still lost because of injuries. Getting high seed means nothing if you can't stay healthy comes playoffs time. Again, we don't know if playing less would have saved us from at least some of the injuries. Nobody knows if Yao would have been healthy if he played 5 mpg less. What I am saying is, you can argue both ways (lower injury risks vs. higher seeding chances) in terms of probabilities. I was referring to the offense because that's what I know about the difference between Adelman's system and JVG's. But I am interested to know the difference at the defensive end. Does it take more energy to play JVG's defense or Adelman's?
As mentioned, they were west conference finalists, while we, without Yao, and Rafer for three games, marched to a halt in the first round....
