After resting starters Deron Williams, Joe Johnson, Reggie Evans, and Brook Lopez, along with bench players Keith Bogans and Jerry Stackhouse, with various hilarious ailments that I wish anagrammed to “We’re resting our guys for the playoffs you idiots,” I asked Brooklyn Nets interim head coach P.J. Carlesimo in the post-game press conference if he’d run a similar rotation — or lack thereof — Wednesday night against the Detroit Pistons in the season finale.
“No,” Carlesimo said flatly. “Our guys are going to play. The other guys are going to play if they’re healthy. They won’t play big minutes, but they’ll play more kind of like a preseason game.”
Despite resting six players that average a combined 162.5 minutes per game (or roughly 68% of a single regulation game’s available minutes), the Nets pulled off a 106-101 victory against the Washington Wizards, improving their season record to 48-33.
Carlesimo said that resting his players again, even in limited minutes, is preferable to letting them sit two games in a row.
“They’re going to be off tomorrow, which is good, but they need to get the rust off. Hopefully playing Wednesday will be more beneficial for them than either our Thursday or Friday practices. So a little bit of conditioning, a little bit of playing basketball for whichever ones are okay to play.”
