Simmons redeems self?

Well, there are a lot of points that could be argued, but the hard facts are that Manu played 31mpg this year, compared with 29.6mpg during his All-Star year in 2005. That’s not how you should play a 30 year old off-guard who plays best with at least 2 days rest.

I’d also argue that a bigger factor early on was that Pop didn’t trust him back when he first signed… in fact, he spent a fair amount of time futilely trying to reign Manu in. In 03, Manu was just a couple of months recovered from a severe ankle injury. Those two short-term factors probably contributed far more to his min-per-game than any long-term durability concerns would have. For his first two seasons with the Spurs, he was still an unknown – he had the bad ankle coming in, but he didn’t have a history of chronic injury, and they had no idea if he was going to be another flash-in-the-pan Euro with more promise than production, or a truly solid player. Basically, there were no health-related reasons to limit his minutes back then.

Besides, even if Manu had joined the Spurs completely healthy, he still would not have beaten out Stephen Jackson or Stephen Smith for the starting position, or even for starter’s minutes. S-Jax had spent the entire previous season working anonymously and diligently on the deep end of the Spurs reserve list earning brownie points in Pop’s book, and Smith was at that point a “grizzled playoff veteran” who’s virtues had more to do with “savvy” than with “knee cartilage”... anyone who knows anything about Popovich knows that there was no way short of day-in-day-out-Jordan-level performances that Manu was going to get a starting position that year.

It wasn’t really until late in ‘04, when Manu was unquestionably the best off-guard on the Spurs, that Pop’s decision to move him to the bench raised eyebrows outside of Argentina. But really, that had more to do with Turkoglu’s inconsistency and Pop’s frustration with Manu’s deviations from the playbook than any concerns about his mileage.

Basically, I’m saying that Popovich has been pretty poor at managing Manu’s playing time over his career. Back in the 2004 and the 2005 seasons, Manu had very few serious injury concerns, but he didn’t even average 30 minutes a game. Starting in 2006, his durability became an obvious issue, and his minutes did drop to 28/game, but Pop should have been limiting him to 22-25 for the regular season. This season, he suddenly started playing him 31 mpg… and that’s just plain irresponsible. Just looking at the stats alone, you could have pretty easily predicted that Manu would be hurting come late May.

My solution? Basically, I think it’s safe to assume that Manu’s injuries will cost him 20-25 games per season for the rest of his career. So get ahead of the curve and hold him out of any non-critical games, or games where there’s little rest. Those b2b road games at Charlotte and New York? Hold him out for one of them. I don’t really care which. If there’s a fogafini, Manu only plays in 2 games… maybe only in 1 if they’re eastern bottom-feeders. Let the bench learn to handle tough situations. Make Popovich learn to coach younger players who can give energy off the bench. Let Tony go wild… he’ll love it.

And yes, I’m serious. I love watching Manu play, but not nearly as much as I hate watching him play hurt.