Has McHale been playing Harden way too much this season?

He doesn't have a choice. Especially when he doesn't trust our next best playmaker.

 

It's a simple business, as a coach you play your best players as much as you can. I hate to point it out, but coaches don't really care about the welfare of the players. It's about keeping your job or moving on to the next better job, so the key is winning games. The best chance to win games is playing your best player or players as many minutes as possible. Pop is not resting Parker or Duncan to be nice to them but to maximize his own benefit...plain and simple. For players with a nice contract, like Amare, injury is no big deal...but for young rooks it's not good to be playing high minutes (....Parsons).

 

Well said.

 

Dwayne Wade, the player Harden gets compared to the most, also played a ton early in his career. Allen Iverson, who probably took the most pounding of any player in recent memory, also huge minutes for much of his career.

There's basically no precedence for any young star to have his minutes monitored, not unless he's known to be injury prone ala Eric Gordon.

 

Look at this please, for your benefit
http://espn.go.com/nba/statistics/player/_/stat/minutes

YOU GIVE GOOD PLAYERS LOTS OF MINUTES!!! IT'S NOT THAT HARD OF A CONCEPT!!!!

 

Because no one on our team is as important as Harden or Asik. I don't think a Delfino/Anserson rotation is significantly worse than Parsons/Delfino such that I would risk losing a game or two by resting Parsons.

OTOH, I would risk losing a few games to ensure we don't go from Harden to our backup 2's. He is far more critical to our success, in the same way Rose is critical to the success of the Bulls.

Finally, Parsons being out injured would not have a huge financial impact either. We have a few % of our cap locked into his contract.

 

He plays Parsons a lot too.

 

Where? People compare him to Manu... Wade is a terrible 3 point shooter, while Harden has been above average for his career....

 

Yes, we are badly in need of depth (or a time machine).

 

The offense is too obvious in fourth quarters. Too easy for teams to defend and harden is tired. When playoffs come the rockets will get crushed as teams amp up their defences. I find it still strange that Mchale is still trying different rotations at this point and time so close to playoffs. When the team isn't scoring I don't mind harden taking shots but when harden is already shooting bad or defence is collapsing on them - the coach has to try something else and put the ball in lins hands to try something.

 

Asik is no longer important. He gets subbed out rather quickly and I sort of understand due to his hands - but Mchale also needs to trust asik to grow and learn too. He takes the starters out way to easily.

 

superstars play ton of minutes. If 100 years old Kobe, Glass ankle Curry can log 38minutes, so can Harden.

 

I'm more concerned with the offense solely going through Harden.

He has the ball in his hands too much. Morey might as well get another starting caliber shooting guard and move Harden to the 1.

 

We are in playoffs expand rotation

 

Yes, but not on a blowout night, or a night he goes 6/22

 

Yes, but it's on Les and Daryl for not putting their foot down.

 

WELL POPS spurs does.

 

haven't we gone through this crap before . the problem with harden PG is that the pace slows down .

 

They're Basketball Players. They get paid to play basketball.

 

So what I've gotten from this thread:

Luol Deng, Kevin Durant, Damian Lillard, and Nicolas Batum all have coaches who WANT to hurt their players (they all play more minutes than him). On a nightly basis, they seek to injure their players by being complete idiots and not listening to ClutchFans's minutes restrictions.

There are also another 15 guys (including Kobe, Lebron, Carmelo, D-Will, David Lee, Noah, Paul George and Steph Curry) who all have bad, meany coaches who want to shorten their careers with all their huge minutes - they are playing more than Chandler.

... and other stuff pertaining to a general lack of basketball knowledge but rooted deeply in emotion and feeling...