I'm ok with that too but the PROBLEM here is that Flip Senior will continue to play the starters heavy minutes and we end up NOT getting the kids (Delfino, Jmax. Amir, Blalock) ready. Flip Senior will only His pet, Flip Junior heavy minutes other than Dice.
Nice division of labor tonight. Category leaders: Points- Tay (31) Rebs- Dice (12) Assists- Chauncey (9) Blocks- Sheed (2) Steals- Nazr (5) Plus, we actually pulled off the zone!!! So what if Kobe wasn't trying. It's just so much fun beating the Lakers. Looks like we are saving the Brahma to provide energy tomorrow night.
By the way, when was the last time we had 5 different outright leaders in the 5 main statistical categories in a game? I bet it has been a while. Years maybe.
Heavy minutes by CB and Tay. Wonder if they will still have the legs tomorrow night. Where's JMax for this game? Why Flip Murray has to play so many minutes when Delf has limited minutes and Blalock has no minutes at all.
Maybe cuz Delfino was sucking. Delfino needs to play his game which is attacking the basket and fascilitating ball movement. Zone looked effective against the lakers and we took care of the glass...probably because the lakers didn't slice us apart. The team is starting to rely on individual skill to carry us instead of playing that team game that we did last year. Do we have offenses not designed around Rip? If its not a rip curl or sheed 3 bomb, its feed sheed and watch him or let tay back down and watch him or let chauncey try to take over and hope he does. This team is too stagnant. There needs to be a change somewhere.
I was glad Tay had such a great game in front of his peeps from Compton. Yeah, no JMax. I don't get it. The natives are gonna get restless if he continues to sit, kinda like the Darko stuff a few years ago. I'm not sure what the above emoticon is supposed to mean, but I like it so I thought I'd use it.
Sadly, I don't think Flip will learn his lesson about sitting starters when we have a big lead until one of our players gets injured against the other squad's second unit. Nice to get a "W", though.
It's really pissing me off. All the starters except for Rip (if he plays) should get around 25 minutes.
If you look at other teams, that's simply not reasonable. Big players play in big games. I will agree that we have not cornered the market on big players though. Billups is a very good, but not great PG. Same with Rip, Tay and Sheed. I don't see a Paul Pierce or Steve Nash on this roster. An Iverson or Kobe. But managing minutes is always the trickiest of games for the coach. Some guys do not respond when given more, and some guys respond poorly when their minutes are trimmed. Chuck Daly did a good job with his 3 guard rotation of Thomas, Dumars and Johnson. He would throw Johnson a bone every couple of games if Thomas or Dumars were not playing well. But he would rarely do it in consecutive games. The starter knew he would get a chance to redeem himself the next game.
Starter Minutes Chauncey Billups 05-06: 36.1 06-07: 35.2 Difference: -0.9 Rip Hamilton 05-06: 35.3 06-07: 37.8 Difference: +2.5 Tayshaun Prince 05-06: 35.3 06-07: 35.3 Difference: 0 Rasheed Wallace 05-06: 34.8 06-07: 33.7 Difference: -1.1 Doesn't seem like the starters are getting rested again.
And they won't. Everything Flip has said amounts to him believing that our guys WERE NOT tired at the end of last season. He thinks they were using that as an excuse, and the only reason we lost last year is that they didn't listen to him. Hard for me to get much from this game, it looked like the Lakers just came back from a hard night at a strip club. The minute distribution was asinine. Delfino misses one shot, bench. Murray could go 0 for 30, and Flip still wouldn't take him out. And for you JMax lovers, now you can start to understand what the DHOF was going through last year. You can't earn it, if you never get a chance to play.
I passed out during the game, but before I did, I saw Delf miss TWO shots. I know because I gave bball jay "the business" about it. :D
