I agree with this in part.
When we learned about Mommy’s injury most were calling for Watson to get more pt. Watson is in year three and we know what he is, and it doesn’t come close to replacing what Milan provides. And we found out yesterday that we SORELY miss what Mommy provides. Watson is a spot minute defender/rebounder and it’s 4 on 5 offensively when he’s in.
You have to moneyball it the best you can and replace Milan in the aggregate with the pieces you have. That’s not possible right now, but we’d be a lot closer to that if Nojus was getting 10-15 minutes to build his confidence. It would also bolster the potential of this team for the endgame part of the season.
Watson provides little of what we need and, while I understand the staff’s decision to give him run with Milan out, I strongly disagree with it.
Gilbert, Lipsey, and Jones played 37, 36, 37 minutes
Structurally speaking, Milan doesn’t change much. Given we don’t play him at the 4 a lot, Milan getting time largely takes one of those three elite guards off the court, making our defense and playmaking worse.
It is more about hoping at least someone has a hot hand.
And for that reason I agree we should have been trying to find as many minutes for Nojus as possible before yesterday. And same for Watson, for the Illinois type games when we need length and athleticism
You don’t need to be 10 deep, but given you can always use more shooting, and there are times we’ll need more perimeter size and athleticism, it’s shortsighted to play 8 guys in blowout buy games