This is definitely too much. I want both of them to play for us in the next 10 years. I don't want them to burn out in 3 or 4 years. We are still one player and three years of player maturing away from being true contender. I want both of them to average 35 minutes, even if that meanings we would lose 5 more games this season.
Douglas will never play better. This is what he is. He just can't run the point, doesn't have the head for it.
Harden and Lin expend a lot of energy on both offense and defense. The best would be if the two average 32 minutes per game. Otherwise, they won't have the legs to last in the entire game by Thanksgiving.
Lol, so true, he almost ran into Harden at 100% top speed when doing a handoff today. Poor guy, he really seems to be trying. Seems like he just doesn't have the tools.
When Lin and Harden are on the bench, the team out there couldn't do much. It's horrible. The worst part is the coach didn't realize how stupid he is by keeping the potential rookies on the bench and not playing them. I hope the fans boo him at home for not playing Terrence Jones.
Agree completely. Let's risk a few games here and there, save their health. But man, as a competitor/competitive coach, pretty tough to do when you are trying to prove yourself to management, really need management support to have the confidence and long-term outlook to do so. Most coaches are on a 1-2 year plan, but for a young team, you've got to plan for longer than that.
I hope Morey's working the phones and dangling a multitude of 2nd round picks for a veteran PG on a bad team. Before the season, I would've just said screw it as we're tanking anyway. But now that this has become more of a "developmental" season, we need a solid floor general backup PG to help our youngsters grow.
This is when we really could have used Shaun Livingston, with him playing the Point Guard on offense and Shooting Guard on defense, and vice versa with Toney Douglas. I hope McHale can come up with something, like actually playing Royce White and letting him handle the ball for the second unit. Lin should be playing around 36 minutes a game like most Point Guards around the league and Harden should be playing around 38 minutes a game. Any more than that, and I'm afraid they'll break down by the All-Star break.
Both Harden and Lin played 40 min today. Agree, we are overusing our backcourt. As of the roster now, Rockets can't afford either one of them gets injured, especially Lin hasn't completely coming back from the knee surgery.
Give me a break. Like another guy said, they're not vets they're youngsters they'll be fine. IMO Lin should average 35-36 mpg this season and Harden around 38 mpg.
That sounds about right and I would say that's what Mchale thinks also. It's a new season with 11 new players I'm sure it will take a while to get things running smoother. Maybe we should give the team a chance instead of calling Mchale a dumb a** everytime he does something we don't agree with. I wasn't to high on him playing Morris but I don't see him in practice everyday and Mchale does, he made the right decision and I had the wrong opinion.
Playing time shouldn't be an issue with these two. Superstars are supposed to log big minutes. Kobe, Durant, Lebron have had several seasons where they average around 40 minutes per game. Lebron has played two seasons where he averaged 42 minutes per game. McHale wants the team to get off to a fast start and at the same time he's still experimenting with the rotations so we can expect the minutes for Harden and Lin to be higher than normal for a little while. Stop talking about injuries, guys. I know the city of Houston hasn't had much luck in that department over the last decade but no need to jinx us by talking about it anymore. Those days are long gone, everyone knock on wood and have a good night. My first post.
In a world made of rainbows you could say 'hell, they're young! they can handle it!' but that's sadly not the case. Playing that much (especially back2backs) is just asking for injury and they're gonna burn out real quick. Their minutes should be managed just a little more carefully if we want them to last all 82 games. Unfortunately, our bench sucks ass, particularly at PG position. It sucks so much that if Toney Douglas is the only backup PG available, I'd much prefer if the team played 4vs5 when Lin goes out.
Rockets need them on the floor, plain and simple. Every time they go to the bench the other team goes on a run
