Wow you seem to really take personal offense?
The strategy isn't to confuse an opponent, its to maximize effective units on the court.
The idea would be pair your best player with weakest (7 8 9 men), with early substitutions. This group can outperform pure bench units. If you have good enough 2nd through 6th men starting they can stay even or slightly outperform opponents. It would increase each groups advantage over other teams.
Your best player still plays big minutes and finishes games.
The idea is that Dames strengths have more value with the shitty teammates then the best. The 2nd to 6th best teammates can perform good on their own but the 7th to 9th men have a greater need for Dames skills.
The main reason we never see this strategy is superstars egos. It would be cool some season if we do see a star that doesn't give a fuck about ego and does it.
Oh I'm not offended, just trying to point out that I thought the idea was preposterous and the reason why no one does it has nothing to do with egos. I was trying to be fairly obvious that I was overreacting to the fact that I disagreed with the idea, it was as someone else pointed out kinda snarky and I apologize for that. I actually think that we should always get our best players to play together for the most amount of time possible, ideally players that are our most talented five and who compliment each others games.
I agree that when you play your other rotation players, those players need to play staggered minutes with some of your starters. I had said in a previous post that it was weird that a lot of people in here would talk about a second unit. That being said, I am a traditionalist in the sense that I feel strongly that you start the game with your absolute best lineup. I know that in the NBA everyone makes runs but imposing your will on your opponent early on can have a serious effect on the rest of the game and the other team's belief that they can beat you even if that isn't fully conscious to the entire opposing team. You can break another team's will early on and I would never give up that opportunity by playing anything but my best lineup.
The Ginobili reference isn't effective in making your argument. Ginobili did not sit on the bench to play with and take bench players' games to another level because the Spurs normal rotation at that time was to bring Ginobili in after two minutes to play with the starters. I think that was about a show of confidence, I think it was about Pop fucking with opponents and above all I think it was about setting Ginobili apart to get him recognition. I don't think sitting Dame for the first two minutes would kill our game, I just don't see the advantage in any way. It's also important to understand that as good as Ginobili was he was never close to as good as Dame so those two minutes weren't as big of a sacrifice to those Spurs' teams initial momentum and did have a better chance to create mismatches because teams' entire game plans weren't geared toward Ginobili the way they are toward Dame.
The only logical thing I see is that you are giving the team more minutes without the terrible combination that Dame and CJ are in the back court but Dame is not the guy out of those two that should play with the guys at the bottom of our rotation. If you made that choice, you bring CJ off the bench.
Also the idea that another team would allow us to dictate who they play against Dame, who is well inside the top ten players in the league, is really funny. If Dame didn't start, the other team would still make sure they played their most stifling defense possible when Dame was on the court, Dame just wouldn't have our best guys around him to help him get through that defense. I just find your idea so incredibly flawed, not to the point of being offended but to the point of finding it ridiculous... honestly, no offense meant.
