martin wrote:nycericanguy wrote:martin wrote:Not for nothing, but I get playing Brunson against the best especially when he is on a roll.No reason IQ can't gobble up some Jalen minutes to keep Brunson near 32 or even 30.
Your best players should play. Jalen is young, with very few NBA miles on him compared to other 27 year olds. No reason his minutes should be cut to 30-32mpg, no other stars play such few minutes. That's something you do for a player like KP to try to keep him healthy. that would make us a worse team period.
Not a believer in this at all. Check out Denver's minutes across the last years. Or Steph's minutes over the last decade. Mitch and iHart do not suffer cause they only play ~24 minutes.
Lots of high level guys do play in the 34+ minute range and that's OK, but having your best guys do 32 - if you have the depth - ain't a bad thing either.
And I wouldn't force the issue like with KP or load management; I'd want IQ to force the minutes thing cause he is playing so well. For me, the Knicks have a gap with their PG position, one who can really control the pace and passing of the team and feel like IQ has an opportunity to grow into that and take minutes that way.
And when playoffs come, best player plays, no questions asked.
Those are unique cases, GSW has taken it easy with Steph considering his previous ankle injuries and the fact that GSW was a perennial playoff team making deep runs every year meant Curry was putting a ton of miles on his body. So that made sense and GSW was good enough to do it. And all that being said Curry was never at 30-32mpg.
Jokic is a big man and bigs tend to play less as the fast pace of today's game is too much for a 7 footer to play huge minutes. But even then he's been around 34mpg the past 4-5 years.
But Brunson playing 30-32mpg at his age with his miles would be truly unheard of for a 27 year old superstar, and we simply aren't good enough to be benching our star and leader for 18mpg. And there's simply no reason to do it.
12/26/2023 1:47 AM