These are the only two teams in the league that have the distinction of playing only 8 guys on the second night of a back to back. I literally just went through all teams' game logs on basketball reference. On every other back to back that has been played so far this year ( outside of a previous rockets one , of course) every team has played more than 8 guys. MDA must really be some kind of genius. Its clearly the optimal strategy to run your rotation into the ground. Other teams are sooo blind Keep in mind MDA's 8 man rotation isnt comparable to most other teams. He can play 35 year old PJ tucker 40 minutes and not put young players with energy into the game until its too late I'd say this is MDA's fault , but its not. CF could have predicted this would happen. Ergo, upper management is either too afraid to step on his toes or they don't care/ agree. I guess we manage loads by not practicing. Seriously tho, houston sports media should be grilling him. I guarantee hes going to say stuff at his postgame conference like " tired legs/ PJ's shot was flat/ gotta bring the energy" ... how is HE not responsible ( at least in part for that) By my count PJ only got 3 min of rest in the second half ( until the last minute ) He went out at 5:54 in the 3rd and came back at 3:35 .... I mean What the **** ? I didnt know PJ was 27 year old Lebron James ? I wouldn't be so pissed if it was only one game .... but even if you disagree with me on the severity of the problem you have to agree that MDA milks ALOT of minutes out of his rotation. In a league in which many other teams are ramping UP the rest their players get , we are ramping up the workload. At this point we are going to be lucky to make it to the playoffs in one piece. Worse yet, we are gonna be playing at 80% and banged up and other teams are gonna be fresh and ready to smash us. Its unconscionable what MDA is doing . He needs to be stopped. Its straight up negligence. The counter argument is our bench sucks ? guess what ? most teams in the league have to play below average players because its not a sprint its a marathon. MDA nervously fiddling with his dick thinking about HCA and he doesnt realize that unless he backs the **** off PJ and JAmes that it wont matter what seed we have. There isnt going to be a situation in 17-18 where we win 65 and can rest down the stretch. I just dont get it. Literally only us and the kings. Thats not the company we want to be in.
For real tho , it only took like 10-15 min . Teams have only played about 3 back to backs so far and a quick scroll to check how many players got in isn’t that work intensive . I didn’t factor for injuries or blowouts , but I’m trying to be pissed not scientific. I will say without providing an exact number there were plenty of close game in which both teams played 9+ guys (including , obviously the team on the back to back)
Lol, y’all really want like a 7th or 8th seed so be it. Let’s play Clemons and Harty more. All this talk about minutes but when has PJ not shown up in the playoffs or been gassed? In fact when have any of our players been gassed? In game 7 where we had injuries, in games where Harden has no secondary ball handlers? Was being gassed why we lost these last two years? Like, you guys are talking about MDA when this roster has clear issues. Bigger issues our defense is awful.
All I hear is “get MDA a perfect roster and he will coach better “ Duh There isn’t a perfect roster in the league . Every team has strengths and weaknesses. What do you want ? One of the LA teams roster or MIL ? No way is MDA playing Dwight Howard and Javale McGee a combined 35 mpg when he had lebron and AD taking up those slots . Philly has a roster with length , you think MDA would play embiid and horford at the same time ? What good is it for Morey to invest assets in picking up a great backup center ? When push comes to shove, MDA will Just play small and use pj at the 5 . Ideally would we get another above average wing on the roster ? Sure. But when Gordon comes back we will be insanely deep at guard. In 17-18 when we had Luc , pj , and ariza we were thin at guard with only cp3 , James , and Gordon Trade offs are always a factor . But MDA doesn’t take full advantage of the roster anyways . Case in point 16/17 playoffs . Nene went down and Harrell who had a very solid regular season doesn’t get off the bench
yea and the Kings are young while we're the oldest team in the league. If we were going to load manage tonight, we might as well just rested both Harden and PJ as well. Those two have been playing way too many minutes.
This is the way MDA does it. It works He gets lots of wins I don't like it either, but to suggest MDA change his style when he is 100 years old is a touch optimistic!
Really, we have BY FAR the worst bench in the league.....we dont have NBA rotation players on our bench. House is a barely an NBA rotation player himself. Same with Mac....look at the roster of the Clippers,Sixers,Lakers and Bucks(which is who we are competing with) and tell me our talent is what it needs to be it isnt. We have Tyson Chandler, Hartenstein, and Thabo playing backup C....are you kidding me??? If Dwight Howard played here like hes doing in LA right now, he would get minutes, so would Javale, we literally tried to sign him. Having an abundance of Wing players is always good,right now neither House, nor Macelmore are good at defense really, they are subpar at best.....Cp3, James, and Gordon are all you need for a guard rotation. If you wanna crticize Mike for anything, its that he hasnt adjusted to that scheme they put Harden through tonight, which was forcing him right and into a shot blocker.
Nice detective work. I woke up this morning and immediately went to the box score and the “only 8 players played” factor jumped out at me. Why play only 8 guys when you know Westbrook is out and Chandler is not available. Give Hartenstein some minutes......he is young enough to get some burn time on the back end of B-2-B’s. I’m afraid to ask you about previous years though @snowconeman22 , ya just might do it, lol.
We're still crying about this? I'd rather play tired players that can play than shitty players. We don't have NBA talent on the end of our bench.
Dantoni don’t trust a lot of guys. The fact that Clemons a rookie and Clark a 2nd year guy getting changes means that’s hes changing
