Tonight he is out with back spasms -- will the lack of talent ultimately shorten his prime? He's being ran into the ground most heinously. And has been for years. What say you?
If only Wilt hadn't played over 4o mpg he might still be playing! "Look, Gary Trent Jr. - don't think of it as riding the pine, think of it as prolonging your career!"
By this logic, literally every star except the few that practice "load management" has been heinously run into the ground.
Dame's minutes have been pretty heavy to start the season (#1 in NBA)...to start any season, frankly. I'd have liked to see them lower. He is still 29 so his recovery time should still be fairly fast. By the way, he's at 38.3 minutes when his career average is 36. That's not a very significant differential I don't think you can make an equation between back spasms and heavy minutes though. Rodney Hood had back spasms and he's averaging 9 fewer minutes. Derrick favors has missed games with back spasms and he's only averaging 21 minutes. the biggest concern is that back spasms can be a chronic issue for some players. Got to hope that's not the case with Dame
I think there are two tracks here you can believe Dame has been playing too many minutes, as I do, and Dame is going to miss tonight's game with back spasms. Those two things may not be related, We just don't know. But I think most would agree that it would be better if Dame was averaging fewer minutes
Coach needs to develop trust in some of his other players and actually run sets. Why are we getting Melo if we're only getting Hood 5 shoots in some games? It's asinine.
It's certainly a concern. I'd give it say 20 more games to see where the team is at. After that, if we're out of it, I would significantly reduce his minutes.
Hood is day to day with back spasms...it's shown his last couple games....he spent all his energy trying to defend Harden last night and looked gassed in the 4th
Just limit his minutes so he doesn't get hurt, we are just too depleted to compete, play the young guys and perhaps trade Whiteside/Baze and players/picks IF a good opp arises to get a piece for the next several years
Reminds me of the season when we had Stoudamire and Van Excel. At one point there were a bunch of injuries so Nick and Damon did most of the scoring for several games in a row. I think that is when Damon had a 54 point game.