Friday, November 13, 2009

You Got to Know When to Hold Em

This season one of the keys for teams like the Celtics and Spurs reminds me of the old Kenny Rogers song The Gambler.

At the Celtics game the other day, I was nervous more than a few times that KG was going to get injured on a play, and was relieved when he and many of the other starters were taken out of the game for the entire fourth quarter.

Aside from building team chemistry and practicing rotations, the regular season is almost irrelevant for these teams. Securing home court advantage in the playoffs doesn't seem worth serious injury risk to me. A bigger concern should be keeping the old players healthy. Doc Rivers and Greg Popovich will need to know when to hold their players in the game and when to take their players out at critical junctures in the game. Is a 10 point lead enough?

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

1 comment:

Bhel Atlantic said...

Seems like some "Bellman Equation"-style analysis a la David Romer could be helpful in this regard.