DudesTown:
I looked over that BR mock draft and saw that we now have Philly’s #2 pick too. In a deep draft, we will have 4 opportunities to improve ourselves.

Yeah, some end of roster talent in the 2nd rd would actually be welcome this year too.

Iggy is gone. Frank is likely gone. Taj should be gone. Rivers spot is still available. Payton is hopefully gone.

In theory we have room to use all 4 picks this year.

On top of which, Bullock, Noel, Burks may leave and open rotation spots for picks with actual talent.

Brian Cronin: There was a stoppage of play with the Bulls up 14 and 1:56 left to go. Yes, most coaches would empty their bench there.

I wish there was an easy way to disprove this but I will continue to disagree based on my own recollection of watching hundreds of playoff games (and even regular season games.) And not even because the game isn’t practically over, it clearly is, or that it’s smart to leave the guys in, it clearly isn’t. It’s probably more of a momentum thing, just let the guys on the floor finish the game unless the other team concedes (i.e. empties their bench) first.

Actually just about every Thibs skeptic has allowed for a lot of nuance, giving him credit for the team playing well-above its projections while still taking issue with his anomalous minutes distributions, among other things.

It’s the weight of good vs. bad.

Every thread has umpteen posts about his minutes allocation and our lousy offense. If you are searching for perfection, even Attkinson doesn’t qualify. 🙂

When I read some of these threads I get the impression the guy sucks even though he’d probably finish in the top 5 for COY if the vote was held today. There’s no telling what the vote would be next week though because all his players might break down before then. 🙂

djphan: this has been the undercover story of the past month.. randle has been playing well but in the last month he has been increasingly dependent on midrange fadeaways and 3pa’s and he is suffering from an efficiency standpoint…

it is an alarming trend…. if it continues and his 3p% falls back even a little… we are basically splitting the difference between last year’s version of randle and early season randle…. which is still an ok player but far from the guy we saw as an allstar….

and if that’s the case… that changes the calculus on a lot of things….

I think some of this is a function of the injuries/roster shuffling….not sure how to get those stats…but some “over reliance” on him versus prior to march could add some noise…but eye test is confirming above…

The real question is whether the typical coach pulls his players at the exact second the game is almost certainly over. The answer is, no, they don’t.

There was a stoppage of play with the Bulls up 14 and 1:56 left to go. Yes, most coaches would empty their bench there.

But what’s happening here now is that some people don’t like Thibs. So they are looking for any possible reason to trash him. In this case they are looking at ridiculously small samples of players and attributing every past injury to him playing them too many minutes.

Actually just about every Thibs skeptic has allowed for a lot of nuance, giving him credit for the team playing well-above its projections while still taking issue with his anomalous minutes distributions, among other things. People in this camp have generally been very careful to not attribute causation on the injury front, despite some inferences being rather intuitive.

It’s the Thibs defenders that won’t even concede it’s perhaps suboptimal that the guy is coaching his third straight team with a wildly disproportionate number of players among the league leaders in minutes.

It’s funny how in the NBA we have the minutes police and in MLB for pitchers we have pitch count/innings limit police. Yet in both sports injuries are not decreasing and at least in MLB pitchers injuries have actually been worse even with “protecting” the players plus advanced medicine and training.

Two words: spin rate.

Fyi sharife cooper declared for the draft. Hope he is available.

It’s funny how in the NBA we have the minutes police and in MLB for pitchers we have pitch count/innings limit police. Yet in both sports injuries are not decreasing and at least in MLB pitchers injuries have actually been worse even with “protecting” the players plus advanced medicine and training.

It’s true in horse racing also.

Horses are given much more rest time between races and race far less frequently now than in the 70s when I first became fan and they raced less in the 70s than they did decades before that. Yet they seem to get injured more often. Everyone has a theory (selective breeding for speed, drugs etc..). But I sort of get the feeling everyone (maybe even including animals) may be a little more fragile for some reason or more likely we are pushing the extreme limits of what bodies can handle now in those fewer performances.