Coaches Who Overplay Their Players?

[mopper8]

Some coaches -- Thibs and D'Antoni come to mind -- have a reputation for overplaying their players, possibly leading to fatigue or injury.

Other coaches -- especially Pop -- have a reputation for being particularly masterful at striking the balance between keeping their guys fresh and maximizing wins.

But I'm curious how you measure this. Looking at the number of players with some minimum number of minutes isn't helpful; if a coach overworks guys, who then get injured, you'll end up with more players playing lots of minutes as injury replacements.

I thought about average minutes per starter, but that could be messed up by token starters like Udonis Haslem (under 19 mpg this year) or Thabo Sefolosha (under 22 mpg last year) when other players still play too many minutes.

Any ideas on how you would try to quantify this?

[sp6r=underrated]

You could look at player production in 5 or 10 minute increments to see if there is a noticeable decline in performance. That is if player A has a substantial drop off in minutes 25-30 vs how he performed in minutes 1-5, 5-10, etc., that is a sign that a player is being overplayed. There are major sample size issues with this approach. You could also look at certain types of injury that I believe are related to being overplayed.