You realize the best two summer league players, Taylor and Troy Williams played a total of 10 games last year. You can figure this one out yourself.
Because a team that's trying to win a championship should have depth, and if you have legit depth on the bench then you need to play them to keep them sharp and keep their morale up. If we've picked the right players to win a ring, these will be people who want to play. Win/lose/ring/lottery I'm sure Moute and Tucker want to play. I'm sure Capela wants to play and Nene would like to play more. The only garbage minutes that can be sacrificed is near the end of the season when everyone should need a bit of a breather and we are running the system very well and Qi has had almost an entire season and training camp to try some minutes. I've noticed a patter with the Rockets that if they are driving the development of a particular player, then they will give them a very short stint early in the season (presumably so the young player understands WHAT they're preparing for) before giving them a chance end of season if they've earned it. I'm hopeful Qi will be better than we expect towards the end of the season. Hard worker with good skills, rarely fails.
in·fer inˈfər/ verb deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements. We're just talking basketball here.
So did Motiejunas fail in your opinion? I think he was a fairly hard worker and he had a unique skillset.
D-Mo the basketball player was unlucky in terms of timing. Just as he was realizing that his skillset is not needed on his team (and being phased out by all teams), he got injured, and the training time lost to injury was irreplaceable for him. He wasn't good enough yet to overcome that. The NBA is very competitive - spending a year or two in rehab rather than playing/training is a big deal. Others are training, the league is advancing. I do, however, think he will be an NBA calibre player again before he retires. His post play will make him succesful overseason and his motor will drive him to try to win regardless of the competition level. Qi is different because it looks like he could develop a 3pt shot and can already block shots. Also the gap between training in China vs training in Lithuania is massive. Qi will improve just because he's under Rockets management. D-Mo came out of a program that sporadically produced NBA calibre big men. IMO Qi is probably already a better player than he was in the summer league. Warning to anyone else reading: I have no interest in discussing D-Mo beyond an example in a discussion about Zhou Qi.