The defense is concerning, but honestly the minutes has me most worried. What can we do to alleviate the weight on Dame/CJ/Nurk/Melo?
2 days off now, no travel, only played for last 2 weeks instead of 6 months... I think we can. Lakers may have to do the same with Lebron and Davis. Now if Lakers beat us and keep their minutes in lower 30s we are in trouble.
Depth is our biggest issue at the moment. I think this is the hand we're dealt with for the bubble, but looking ahead to the offseason, we desperately need to use the pick to trade for a win-now piece and be smart with our MLE.
Considering Gary Trent Jr. also played 35 minutes, there's probably nothing the team can do to alleviate the weight on the starters. They don't have any decent depth without Hood and Ariza. In any competitive game, they're just going to have to ride their starters as far as they can. Ideally, you rest them if they're getting blown out (or, hopefully, they're blowing the Lakers out but that seems less likely) but that's about it.
Maybe if Whiteside can get his head in the game, they won't have to play Nurk 40 minutes. Or if Collins would swap out his cinder blocks for hands.
If we had Hood and Ariza to play around with that would be so much more helpful in limiting players minutes, but since we don't this is how we have to do it to have any shot. Luckily this is a bit different in that these guys had 4 months off so while they are tired, exhausted, etc, they aren't anywhere near as bad off as they would have been had the regular season kept going on normally.
Take the two days rest, throw some biofreeze on it, come out and beat a team 4 times out of seven. My fingers are crossed.
More minutes for Mario, at guard, is the only way to help give CJ and Dame a break. Like it or not. Wenyen and Zach can help out the forward spot. More minutes for Whiteside at the center spot against McGee/Howard.
Wenyen should take all of Mario’s minutes. Who cares if Mario can handle the ball he’s too stupid to make correct decisions with it consistently. Wenyen is better at everything else.
I really wish Simons wasn't such trash right now. Simons and Zach have both been really disappointing.
Playoffs is heavy minutes time; short rotations. We're underdogs to get out of the first round, so there's no point resting the starters now. It's do or die time...not that it hasn't been for the past 9 games!
Hassan’s not gonna suck every game. Play Trent major minutes. Play Gabriel more. For God sake don’t play Hezonja at all - that was a nice block but it looked like a “rage block” from the frustration of all his hideous play beforehand. Dame 36 CJ 36 Trent 36 Nurk 30 Hassan 26 Melo 30 Gabriel 24 Collins 22
Only if you ignore Zach, which is sillier than most of your hot takes. I never saw an explanation of what he did to his ankle, but he was clearly hobbling up and down the court before they took him out. It looked like lower back to me, so "ankle inflammation" sounds like good news. I expect he'll be back on Tue and be an extremely important contributor against AD.
