Researcher Says Thorn to Blame for Declining Wins

This article is moronic. The key feature of those early teams was the amazing fortune when it came to avoiding injuries. Almost by definition, a team’s bench is not as capable as its starters. Over the past two years, the Nets have simply had more injuries than they suffered in the early Kidd years, thereby increasing the dependency on the bench. The author’s charts actually bear this out, if he bothered to look at the “minutes played” column. If you want to compare the effectiveness of the bench each year, you’ve got to standardize the minutes of the non-starters, and figure out if a disproportionate number of minutes went to the 11th through 14th players on the depth chart due to injuries. For instance, Krstic’s injury last year—which received no mention—had a cascading effect through the entire roster. Also, when primary reserves like Eddie House were injured, it increased the dependency on players that would normally just be playing a few minutes a night, if that. I think you’ll find that the Nets’ bench was actually pretty good, just overworked. The big hole in the bench last season was just Cliff Robinson—or, really, that it took the Nets so long to figure out that he had nothing left. However, had Krstic not gotten injured, and Boone not gotten a late start dur to HIS injury, they would have had no need to rely on him to such an extent. . . . in comparison, in those early Kidd years, there were very few games lost due to injury among the top seven players in the rotation. Big, big difference.

It’s disingenuous to include Carter’s first season in any analysis; we all know that the team was absolutely terrible that year following the fire sale the previous summer, and was stumbling along with a 12-24 record before Carter was acquired and miraculously led them to the playoffs. The bench last year and this year is much, much, much better than that.

thorn frustrates me almost as much as willie randolph does. never improves the bench, refuses to make a blockbuster when the need is obvious.