Here are some snippets, the entire article is here: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/...stars-play-less-and-for-good-reason-heres-why The decrease in individual player minutes has been quite noticeable since the 1998-99 season. The average number of players seeing 40 minutes or more per game from 1998-99 to 2002-2003 was 9.4 per season. It decreased to 6.8 from 2003-04 to 2007-2008. Then, from 2008-09 to last season, that average number dipped all the way down to 0.6. Miami Heat head coach Erik Spoelstra added, "Coaches want to work in that depth to keep their players as fresh as possible for that stretch run. The bigger rotations aren't the only reason for the lower player minutes. To gain a deeper perspective, Bleacher Report also spoke with a few other NBA insiders: current Heat and longtime assistant Ron Rothstein, former standout head coach and current TNT broadcaster Mike Fratello, and Dr. Mike Clark, the physical therapist for the Suns for now a 14th season. Here are other factors behind the trend. Clark added, "The less minutes played by these athletes will certainly increase their durability, resilience and longevity because it enhances recovery overall. When you play less minutes, you get less beat up." "Now, people are afraid to play guys 42, 44 minutes a night," Fratello said. "It's just part of the times, part of the expanding of the staffs. There are that many more people involved, and you have that many more opinions. And they think this guy will last longer in the NBA if we cut down his minutes to 34, 36 minutes a night." What fewer minutes, rest and recovery really boil down to, Spoelstra said, is "peaking at the right time before the playoffs." "That does not mean we're devaluing regular-season games by any stretch of the imagination," he said, "but we want to make sure that they're reaching top physical and mental performance, and hopefully staying relatively healthy as possible." For many years, determining minutes was mostly a collaboration between coaches and management. Now, there are many others involved on the health side in the decision-making process. With the new advancements available for player recovery has also come the expansion of teams' training, medical and even science staffs. Fratello said with more personnel working together, "analytics have played a large part" in the decrease in player minutes. Abunassar, the player trainer, agreed. "There are so many more people evaluating minutes played and who's tired, who's not tired," he said. "It's like Kevin (Garnett) not playing in back-to-backs (this season). They never did that in the '80s, like with Moses Malone. When they were tired, they were tired. They never did all the (testing) and the body analysis—the stuff that they're going through now. "Back then, they didn't have six guys on the training staff analyzing the body. Nowadays, every team has one, maybe two, therapists. Now, there's the trainer, the strength coach, a director of performance like in Toronto." "Coaches have found out with many players, you reach a point of diminishing returns," Heat assistant Rothstein said. "Most players, to quote Chuck Daly, 'want 48 minutes and 48 shots,' and they all think that they should be starting and they all think they should be stars. But certain guys, if you play them 24 minutes a night, and then you start playing them 32 minutes a night, their numbers won't increase. "Coaches have sort of figured out over the long haul, 'OK, we're better if this guy is a limited-minutes guy because some guys are limited-minutes guys.' They don't want to buy it, but the more they're on the court, the more their weaknesses become exposed. And the shorter their stint, the more their strengths are apparent." Fratello said he's finding more players being "content" with logging fewer minutes, which has surprised him a bit. But Cartwright said guys are "simply smarter now" and don't want to risk playing longer minutes, especially when they're feeling some pain. "We used to play when we were injured all the time," he said. "If you twisted your ankle or your knee swelled up, the next day you're just going to put some tape on it and play. Now, guys are going to take some time off and get themselves back to where they were, so they can play at a very high level. If you look at those old films, guys were bandaged by the end of the season from head to toe, and just playing with whatever was bothering them. Now, they don't do that." "In order to play productive minutes, we try to emphasize the intensity of how hard you're playing and not pacing," Spoelstra said. "If you're playing at the intensity level that we would expect, you shouldn't be able to play 45 minutes a game."
Here is how much the all-stars have been playing this season. Does that count as "today's NBA?" All star game voted starters Lebron (36.3) Anthony Davis (35.8) Melo (35.7) Blake (35.4) Wall (35.3) Lowry (34.9) Pau (34.8) Kobe (34.5) Marc Gasol (34) Stephen Curry (33)
Each of the past two seasons, the Bulls have had just one player play more than 36 minutes per game. Jimmy. So your rant is misguided.
This is fun. Bulls played a double overtime game against the Lakers and lost 123-118. Have a look at how our players played > 40 minutes but also how the Lakers played their starters > 40 minutes, too. That's how it really works in the NBA, bleacherreport "article" or not.
Two nights prior, we played another OT game against the best team in the league, the Warriors. You compare Kerr to Hoiberg (HAHAHAHAHA) and rag on Thibs for playing players > 40 minutes once in a while. So here's Kerr playing four of hist starters 39+ minutes and his elite/best guard tandem in the league 43 minutes or more.
I wouldn't say "people are afraid of playing 42, 44 minutes per night". They're just not doing it in the regular season, you know, where there are more blowouts, etc. As far as the playoffs go, in the last 5 playoffs seasons 35 players have played 40+mpg 55 times. That seems to be 11 per season, in a sample size of 80 starters (16 playoff teams x 5 starters). "Bleacher report".
All star game voted starters from 2004-05 (10 years ago) LeBron 42.4 Iverson 42.3 McGrady 40.8 Bryant 40.7 Garnett 38.1 Carter 36.7 Hill 34.9 Shaq 34.1 Duncan 33.4 Ming 30.6 Average 37.40 Of course, I don't know how many Double OT games were played back then..................... Minutes Per Game leaders 2014-15 No players over 39 minutes 17 players 35.0 or more minutes 20th in minutes 34.8 30th in minutes 33.7 40th in minutes 32.9 50th in minutes 31.9 Minutes Per Game leaders 2004-05 (10 years ago) 8 players over 39 minutes 48 players 35.0 or more minutes 20th in minutes 38.2 30th in minutes 36.9 40th in minutes 36.1 50th in minutes 34.9 The average All-Star starter is playing 2.43 minutes per game less than 10 years ago. That's a 7% decrease over a 10-year period. In the real, actual NBA, players minutes are going down yearly. Maybe there were a lot more Double OT games 10 years ago? Laugh at Bleacher Report all you want, but at least the guy who wrote this article is intelligent enough to understand simple, basic, 1st grade math. Players are playing less minutes per game than they were 10 years ago, plain and simple. I'm surprised that a person who can figure out how to post on a message board can't figure that out, it's quite obvious.
Maybe you misunderstood what I wrote. I was simply stating that the way this Bulls team allocates MPG to their all-star game starter is certainly in line with the way other teams allocate minutes to their all-star game starters in today's NBA. Players today certainly play less on a MPG basis than players from 10-20 years ago. Did we really need some "bleacher report" (lol) article to tell us that? You said Thibs was "stuck in the 90s." I thought this was a ridiculous statement on many levels, the leader being that Thibs won a title as "associate head coach" in the mid 2000s and has racked up a great record as coach of the Bulls in the 2010s, as outlined in the report you produced for Denny Crane. Certainly someone "stuck in the 90s" would not be enjoying such present day success, assuming it was a pejorative term. It seems on a MPG basis, Thibs certainly isn't "stuck in the 90s" with how he runs the Bulls. http://www.basketball-reference.com/leagues/NBA_1997_leaders.html http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/minutes/sort/avgMinutes/qualified/false Poor overworked Jimmy Butler (who enjoyed his all-star team appearance and will be enjoying his huge upcoming guaranteed contract thanks to his performance under Thibs) would not have even broken the top 16 in MPG back then and Pau would not even be close to the top.
Kobe was voted an all-star this year, no? Says enough about using all-star for anything other than generating butts in seats, thus profit.
All I did was post an article, I never mentioned Thibs once in this thread. Or GarPax. Yet you are the third person to make fun of Bleacher Report for posting accurate information about minutes and quotes from NBA coaches and trainers. Aren't you late in posting today's "Hinrich's Contract" thread?
That is true, you didn't. Now, of course, everyone sees you have been hammering Thibs for minutes allocations, so this posting of course plays into the general theme you've been on, obviously, even though it just shows that Thibs is keeping up with the times. Certainly not "stuck in the 90s." As for Bleacher Report, its well known that many have accused them of "dumbing down" the web. I personally don't have any problem with the masses being able to "publish" articles. Its just when your maintenance man starts considering himself a "professional" because he has a crappy blog and some bleacher report articles is where it becomes laughable.
Speaking only for myself, I "make fun" of Bleacher Report for the vast majority of their "articles" and "columns" that misconstrue and incorrectly analyze facts and observations. The VAST majority. So for me, while I'll never "make fun" of a fan for getting their info from anywhere they want to get it, and while BR can bring up good topics as water-cooler conversation, using them as any semblance of authority (or applauding who they went to for "deeper understanding" like Fratello and Cartwright) has proven over the vast majority of their lifetime to be less-than-substantial. For instance, if they wanted a "deeper understanding" of why players are sat more, why not interview ANYONE in the Spurs organization? If they wanted to prove "there's a good reason" as in their title, what's the benefit? Are there fewer injuries per year? Fewer games missed? Fewer injuries in the playoffs because teams are more rested? I didn't see any stats, other than "it's better if you play less. Cuz baseball". Which is ridiculous in itself, but my blasting of innings limits and pitch counts will have to wait for another post. I mean, Spoelstra's quote: "If you're playing at the intensity level that we would expect, you shouldn't be able to play 45 minutes a game," is a bit disingenuous...anyone competent trying to write (or edit) the article might've been able to say "but Coach, you've used LeBron and Wade in 44, 43, 42, and 42 mpg in the last 4 years of playoffs. Are you saying they weren't at the intensity level you expect (thus leading to 2 finals losses?) or that there's a significant dropoff between 43 and 45?"
Good article and very well sourced. I suspect that the fact that it was written in 2013 explains why the Heat rather than the Spurs were the featured team. Thanks for finding and posting. And no, you clearly didn't editorialize.
