Okay so I had some random thoughts during the Nets/Wizards preseason game yesterday. Obviously preseason doesn’t matter but it got me thinking.
The Nets won by 39 points and no player played more than 25 minutes. In preseason this is common, but i wonder if this is a legitimate strategy for certain teams during a regular season.
Say you have a team where nobody averages over 30. You go heavy on the bench rotations, and your main goal is to maximize effort. More anaerobic energy, less aerobic, which should be sustainable since they’re playing less overall minutes. Could this strategy win for a regular season?
It reminds me of the 2014 spurs. Obviously you would need a good system in place, good teamwork, and no egos because everybody needs to be on board and sacrifice their stats.
The biggest downsides I see are rhythm and playoffs, but focusing on just the regular season I’m curious how this would do. Regular season nba is notorious for low effort on defense, so having a 15-man deep team to run it down at full throttle all game might legit be a decent idea.
Mechanically possible, in that you could probably put together a team that can do this if you have your pick of the league - even in terms of having a realistic mix of role players vs stars.
Logistically? I don’t think so. The hidden value you’d have to dig out is a huge challenge. You need to find a good number of players who are undervalued or badly misused and fit together well both in personality and play style, in a league that in my opinion is better than ever at understanding how to maximize player strengths.
Those Spurs were a perfect storm of older stars willing to take cuts, diamonds in the rough in guys like Diaw, and developing talent like Kawhi, not to mention a ridiculous level of buy in from role players like Green. I’m sure the right combination of players can exist if you look at the league and play mix and match, but I have extreme doubts that the market will let you assemble it.
Agreed, though I am not sure if I would call Danny Green’s level of buy-in ridiculous. He had been in the G-League as recently as 2011 and the Spurs were the only team that ever gave him an extended shot.
I am confident it wasn’t too hard for Danny Green to be happy playing defense and shoot 3s in that environment.
I think anyone in his situation would be grateful and work hard for the team that believed in him, I just think based on the impression I’ve gotten from interviews and such that Danny’s level of loyalty to Pop is something very special, and it paid off on the margins.