As you guys in the DH$52 league know I have been “lucky” enough to win two of the season’s first four games in OT. I’ve also pushed a few of my players a little beyond their average minutes because these first 10 division games are critical, and finally the WIS engine has misallocated my rotation a few times (it actually put Tyson Chandler at SF and Rodman at PF on offense for a few minutes in my game v. DH, WTF WIS? Chandler is nowhere near my SF depth-chart you morons, and why the heck would I play him at SF and the Worm at PF at the same time?) So those factors have put me in a 14-16 minute hole with a number of my starters, and in six short games I’ll be staring down a serious fatigue hit if I don’t make a series of adjustments. We are talking about having up to six of my guys under a 95% fatigue level if I continue to play them their normal minutes for the games leading up to the fatigue hit. And we ALL know how ugly of a situation that would create.
AND If I hit a 3rd OT anywhere in the next six games then I’ll be royally screwed, I’d rather lose in regulation than win in OT for the next few games or the nightmare I’m already dealing with become exponential.
I can sit my low usage guys or Hardaway without any problems but here’s my big issue: to rest Daugherty I HAVE to keep 8 usage points at the two G positions to stay out of the team usage penalty because I don’t have any usage from my backups. That means 96 minutes from Deron, West and Hardaway for a game, which could be done but would create yet another problem by pushing those three further over their already extended minutes.
The traditional route to minute recovery is of course the “clear the bench” option. I hate this because it messes up my beautiful data, but worse yet I have 4 scrubs, NOT 5. I’d love it if the sim would let me designate Korver as my 5th guy for clear the bench because he actually has excess minutes, but we ALL know that the guys that come in for garbage time are the 5 with the lowest scheduled minutes for the game, meaning Hardaway will burn even more of his precious minutes with the scrubs, which is a real catch-22 because I NEED at least 16 minutes from him in any game I rest Daugherty.
And I really don’t want to schedule my guys for like 24 minutes a few times to get back my minutes back either, because I refuse to mess up their per game averages, I LOVE seeing my guys near the top of the league leaders board and I’d rather lose a game by resting them altogether than see them drop off the list. The “must start five drafted players” rule in this league is something I also have always followed and would never break, plus I don’t want to mess up my position on the team rankings board. I guess I’m just basically screwed at this point and may have to play with fatigued guys in game 11 and try something unique in game 12 against the currently 0-4 iccoachb team that I may be able to compete with even if I have some expose to the team usage penalty for that game.
I’ve decided that my immediate fix is to go ahead and set up to 4mpg of “clear the bench” and hope to recapture a few of my minutes without messing up my data too much, but man that’s a painful route for me to take for the reasons mentioned above.
Would love to hear what some of you guys would do in my current situation.