Capn'O wrote:Knicksfan1992 wrote:The people who complain about minutes load have probably never played a sport above high school level before. These guys practice, work out, travel. and recover WAY more than they actually play in the games. And it's been reported that Thibs has really cut back on practice time this season because of all of the injuries they've suffered. All of those factors probably play more into injuries than the games themselves do but we as fans and media don't have access to those types of things so they become an "out of sight out of mind" variable that doesn't help fit certain narratives...
While I understand NBA game speed is more intense than anything these guys do in training/practice, 10 extra minutes a game for a month isn't going to determine if someone is going to get hurt or break down or whatever you want to call it. Especially, if the injury isn't a soft tissue leg injury. Those are really the only kinds of injuries that are tied to overuse or poor preparation.
These guys are abnormally large human beings being tasked with playing in an extremely confined space and making explosive movements repetitively over the course of what has now become a 365 day a year job with all the outside training that goes into this. Injuries are going to happen and especially the ones the Knicks have don't seem to have correlation with overuse of the legs which is what most people's complaints about Thibs minute distribution would lead to. Maybe Hartenstein's? That's about it though.
Beyond this though, Thibs is a maniac. He keeps playing guys when they're obviously hurting or beyond gassed and it's just wild to me. I was at the Portland game - I've never seen a guy in such consistently obvious pain as OG remain in the game outside of do or die playoff situations.
basically this.
its a medical staff thing but thibs is a part of that. Because his tenure in NY isn't the first time this has happened. He played Derrick Rose and Loul Deng and Noah huge minutes and a lot of those guys had much shorter careers. Can everything be blamed on him...no absolutely not and he is a successful coach and people certainly compliment him on his relentless attention to detail and preparation especially in the regular season.
But like you said there is a reason sports scientists brought in load management and minutes restrictions because while you can't prevent every injury you can also be smart about certain things to not compound them.
He's got that "if he dies, he dies" mentality as long as we are wining.
