Tick Tock, Doc: Rivers Better Get His Minutes Straight

Heading into the playoffs, Boston is finding new ways to make me pessimistic about their chances.  Aside from the lack of rebounding, free throw shooting, and turnovers, Doc Rivers has thrown in another wrench to the already shaky works.  The Celtics rotations are a chaotic mess that defy conventional wisdom.

Take a look at the minute distribution in the previous five games:

Look at those minutes, Doc. Do they make sense to you?

Rajon Rondo:  197

Paul Pierce:  180

Kevin Garnett:  160

Ray Allen: 156

Rasheed Wallace:  104

Kendrick Perkins: 89

Glen Davis: 78

Tony Allen: 68

Michael Finley: 56

Shelden Williams: 45

Nathan Robinson: 41

Marquise Daniels: 39

Brian Scalabrine: 11

I know that depth is a wonderful thing to have heading into the second season but no one is thirteen players deep.  I mean, are you kidding me with this?  The numbers are slightly skewed with the injury to Perkins keeping him out for two of the five games but the overall feel of it doesn’t exactly strike me as a coach that has his post season rotations on lock.

The Boston coaching staff and front office looks like they don’t know what kind of team they want to be.  Should they play half court sets and be a jump shooting team or look to fast break?  Do they want to whole sale sub the starters or do they want to keep one or two in with the second unit?  Everything seems disorganized in a sort of fly by the seat of your pants way.  One rotation not working?  Eff it, blow it up and hand out some DNP Coach’s Decisions the next game.

I understand role players and situational awareness.  At the end of a quarter you might not want your stars maybe getting hit with a questionable foul so you send in a scrub for thirty seconds, that’s fine.  When you play a guy for seven minutes one game, sit him the next and then put him on the floor for nineteen minutes after that it’s going to mess with the flow of the team.

For old times sake.

Look at Robinson’s minutes.  He is barely ahead of Marquise Daniels (who was signed in the offseason to spell Pierce and handle the rock) and Brain Scalabrine, who doesn’t require parenthetical tangent.  Nate was brought in at the expense of three players and a draft pick and he didn’t even touch the floor in the win against Cleveland.  Excuse me if I sound like I’m repeating myself, but what the hell did Ainge get him for?  I thought he was supposed to be an upgrade over Eddie House to run the point for the second unit and drop threes but he’s been relegated to cheerleading.  A lot of that has to do with Rondo playing 40+ minutes every game but that is still no excuse.

In all honesty, I don’t think Nate deserves a spot in the playoff rotations.  The guys who are consistently contributing need to be able to play together to get some sort of cohesiveness with each other and maybe cut down on the turnovers.  I believe that there should be a nine man rotation at the most with a starter always on the floor.  I would have it set up for the front court (KG and Perk, mostly) to get the rest in first barring any sort of foul trouble that may befall the guards and then rotate the back court out.

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