Totally absurd. Ridiculous. Home court advantage means something...and is especially important when teams are as closely matched as they are in the West.
nah i prefer to run everything and everything through Harden god forbid he get tired or we get some playmaking help for him #PRIG
I think resting key players a game here and a game there is perfectly fine... What I don't agree with is Pop sending 3/5 or 4/5 of his starting lineup home early on a road trip... that just results in a crappy product being delivered to people who bought tickets with reasonable expectations...
Was reading this article http://www.sportal.com.au/nba/blatt-hails-new-look-record-breaking-lebron/1ksnvylpdm3781vhyqoxu8qhcg and cut and pasting. """ When asked whether James' decision to play without his headband was a conscious decision, Blatt replied: "I don't know, but I'm liking it! "He played great and we were able to keep his minutes down once again. """ The sentence that jumped out to me was that the coach is saying that he is trying to keep LeBron's minutes down. My opinion is McHale should be doing the same for Harden.
I really don't know what to say about "rest" days. Couple of our players looked gassed from the 3 days off before the B2B.
It is interesting to look at average minutes played in the NBA over the years. Not many of today's players break into the top tiers of those ratings. You will also note that many of these names also appear on the list of players who have played more than 1000 games. Not many of today's athletes appear on either list. We have a related active thread on resting players. Interesting data. NBA/ABA Rank / Player/ MPG/ 1. Wilt Chamberlain 45.80 2. Bill Russell 42.29 3. Oscar Robertson 42.20 4. Allen Iverson 41.12 5. Elgin Baylor 40.03 6. LeBron James 39.32 7. Jerry West 39.24 8. Jerry Lucas 38.76 9. Bob Pettit 38.75 10. Latrell Sprewell 38.63 11. Dave Cowens 38.60 12. Paul Arizin 38.42 13. Larry Bird 38.40 14. Elvin Hayes 38.37 15. Michael Jordan 38.26 16. Kevin Durant 38.01 17. Mel Hutchins 37.93 18. Stephon Marbury 37.70 19. Geoff Petrie 37.64 20. Steve Francis 37.56 21. Walt Frazier 37.53 22. Rick Barry 37.40 23. Walt Bellamy 37.33 24. Jamal Mashburn 37.25 25. Nate Thurmond 37.22 26. Karl Malone 37.16 27. Chris Webber 37.12 28. Cuttino Mobley 36.97 29. Pete Maravich 36.95 30. Glenn Robinson 36.84 31. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar 36.82 32. Magic Johnson 36.69 33. Charles Barkley 36.65 34. John Havlicek 36.59 35. Brad Daugherty 36.55 36. Kobe Bryant 36.54
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Its curious to me that for an analytically driven team Houston has played Harden so many mins this year (36.8mpg)</p>— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/579400514351181824">March 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>Both Harden and Ariza have missed 1 combined ams and are both playing over 35mpg, they may be doing something different with practices tho</p>— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/579400624032202752">March 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/TheArmoTrader">@TheArmoTrader</a> Thats fine, nobody is gonna bat 1000 - this seems more obvious though.</p>— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/579400893746958336">March 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>You may want to give a guy who’s production took a big nosedive in the 2h of playoff games last year a bit of a rest.</p>— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/579401213348687872">March 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p>.<a href="https://twitter.com/EmilTellerup">@EmilTellerup</a> yes thats important, but they aren’t gonna catch GSW - I guess having HCA in the 1st round is pretty important to them.</p>— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/579401655285755904">March 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="en"><p><a href="https://twitter.com/bullzeyeno1">@bullzeyeno1</a> Of course it’ll be a factor, especially when a team works in on the defensive end as well. (which will happen in playoffs)</p>— Haralabos Voulgaris (@haralabob) <a href="https://twitter.com/haralabob/status/579401802023489536">March 21, 2015</a></blockquote> <script async src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
I am as big a fan of resting players as any fan, but I have to say that there's very little to suggest it's necessary for young players to succeed in the playoffs. Some of the best playoff performances by superstars have came at the heels of some huge regular season minutes. This includes Tim Duncan during his prime, who routinely averaged more minutes than Harden is this year. On the flip side, when the Spurs started resting players, they didn't actually start getting injured less. In fact, last year was their only healthy year. This year, they're back to being pretty damn injured again despite all the minutes management. If you want to look at players, Parsons was playing huge minutes with us the past 2 seasons. This year with the Mavs, he's playing less minutes, getting rest, and ironically, injured more while not producing more. So has the minutes helped or not? Quite frankly, I don't think the issue is as black and white as many people are making it out to be. I would like Harden to get more rest. But I'm not certain him playing an extra minutes will cause him to suffer as much as lack of homecourt will cause the entire team to suffer.
