Should Golden State Warriors Sit Stars After Clinching NBA's Best Record?
At 64-15, the Golden State Warriors have long since clinched the Western Conference’s best record and recently guaranteed themselves of finishing the 2014-15 season with the NBA’s top win-loss output overall.
Owners of the league’s largest team point differential (plus-10.2), per NBA.com, winning games over the course of the year has often appeared relatively easy for the Warriors. But make no mistake; Golden State has worked extremely hard to get where it is today, and with three games remaining on the schedule, it’s perfectly understandable to wonder if head coach Steve Kerr should give some of his stars a game or two off.
Of course, the last time Kerr elected to rest his top-of-the-rotation guys, he received a lot of flack for it. That particular occasion came on March 13 against the Denver Nuggets, a game the Warriors ultimately went on to lose 114-103 without Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson in the lineup.
“It’s fair criticism,” Kerr told The Denver Post’s Christopher Dempsey. “If I had bought tickets for my family, and I wanted to see Steph Curry play, and he sat out, I’d be upset. I understand that, but I can’t base my team’s welfare on that. That’s one of the reasons why I do it on the road—because we like to look after our own fans.”
The first-year head coach went on to explain that it would be nice if he could keep other teams’ fans in mind when making lineup decisions but claimed it just wasn’t in his team’s best interest that evening.
“The reality is, for our team to prosper and for our team to be in the best shape going forward, Steph and Klay (Thompson) really needed a night off.”
While obviously controversial in the eyes of many, there’s nothing wrong with what Kerr did, and fans eventually come to understand why coaches do this randomly throughout an 82-game season (see: Popovich, Gregg).
Now, with just a handful of games to be played before the playoffs begin, the Warriors will most likely opt to hold out Curry, Thompson, Draymond Green and Andrew Bogut.
However, rather than sitting these guys out for games at a time, perhaps it would make more sense for Golden State to simply dial back some of its players’ minutes. This way, the team maintains its momentum as it surges toward the postseason while doing well to not overexert the stars—an idea ESPN NBA analyst Brad Daugherty also proposed.
“They are so close to making history, but you have to rest guys intermittently,” Daugherty said on the April 3 edition of SportsCenter. “And they will continue to play guys, but you may see Steph Curry; you may see Klay Thompson play five fewer minutes throughout a game just because you don’t want to take a chance of getting them injured. But you do have to keep them in rhythm.”
Daugherty’s thought process is right where Kerr’s should be, and judging off how genius he’s been this year, it probably already is.
Giving his key players a night off between now and the end of the season wouldn’t be a problem. But Kerr should heavily consider giving them at least minimum burn in game No. 82.
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