Almighty Coach

The general manager of the Boston Celtics, Dennis, arrived to work early, as usual. His secretary got him a cup of coffee and he sat in front of his computer. He went online and researched last night’s NBA games.

Boston was in the eastern United States so, when teams in the west started playing, it was a little later for those living in Boston. Teams that played on West Coast, like the Lakers, Clippers, Warriors, Trail Blazers, started their games three hours after teams that played on the East Coast. The games on the East Coast ended before the games on the West Coast even started. Therefore, most people in Boston were asleep when games on the West Coast ended. This was why Dennis rarely watched games on the West Coast all the way through. It had become a habit of his to check on the previous night’s games on the West Coast first thing in the morning.

After checking the scores of various games, Dennis saw the score between the Clippers and Spurs.

92 to 87! The Spurs lost to the Clippers? How is that possible? Although the Spurs are unlikely to win the championship this year, they are still a strong team. Now is the time for teams to be making a final push to get into the playoffs. How could they lose to a weak team like the Clippers? Getting 92 points for the Clippers is normal, but the Spurs only got 87 points. The Spurs’ offense is strong and the Clippers aren’t exactly known for their defense. How could the Spurs only get 87 points? What happened?

Dennis immediately clicked and checked out the detailed statistics. He hoped he would find some clues to what happened.

Starting only substitutes? What is that old fox, Gray, doing! His two key players were not even in the active players’ lists. Is this rotation? There’s still one month left before the regular season ends. Isn’t it a little early for a rotation?

Dennis looked at the Spurs ranking in the Western Conference.

The Spurs are currently ranked fifth in the Western Conference. After losing this game, they are 1.5 wins away from the fourth-ranked team and the three teams below them are pretty close. They won’t even have the home-court advantage in the playoffs. Where did they find the courage to rotate? Isn’t it time to work hard and try to move into fourth place? At least to try to secure the home-court advantage during the playoff.”

Dennis furrowed his brow for a long time trying to guess what drove this decision. However, they were all blind guesses. They only made him less certain of why the Spurs did what they did.

“Although the Clippers aren’t a strong team, there was no way the Spurs could win with only subs. The Spurs were clearly trying to lose the game!” Dennis said to himself. Suddenly, he thought of something and clicked on another link. He went to check the results of the Clippers.

The Clippers are now in 11th place of the Western Conference. With the same record, they would be in the ninth place of the Eastern Conference. That means that there are four teams in the west whose records aren’t as good as the Clippers, and six teams in the east that worse records. Based on their current ranking, the Clippers are ranked 11th from the bottom of the entire league! Damn it…

Dennis couldn’t help but curse in his head. He remembered that he was getting a draft pick from the Clippers.

The draft in the NBA was related to how each team ranked in the regular season. The worse the team did, the earlier they would be able to draft, which made it more likely they would get a good player. On the contrary, the better the team did, the worse their draft pick. The team ranked at the bottom of the league had the best chance to get the first pick. The team ranked first basically signed up to get the 30th pick.

Theoretically speaking, the Clippers were ranked 11th from the bottom, so they would get the 11th pick.

However, before Dai Li became the head coach of the Clippers they were ranked second from the bottom of the Western Conference. They were ranked fourth from the bottom of the entire league. They were amongst the bottom feeders of the league. In the past, the team ranked fourth from the bottom had about a 10% chance to get the first pick. There was also a high probability of them getting the second or third pick. Even without luck, it was easy for them to get one of the top five.

That meant that after Dai Li began coaching the team, the Clippers went from getting the fifth pick to getting the 11th. Their slot had clearly depreciated in value.

In truth, the 11th pick wasn’t that bad. There was a chance they could still draft a good player. However, compared to the fifth pick, the 11th pick was significantly worse. They also lost the chance of getting the first pick. Any team would be willing to take that 10% chance of getting the first pick than take a 100% chance of getting the 11th pick.

The Clippers had traded the Celtics their first-round draft pick this year. When the Clippers were doing terrible this season the value of the draft pick had increased significantly. Dennis had thought that he had profited a lot from the deal.

The Celtics had still remained in the top three of the Eastern Conference, so they had a chance of winning the championship. The draft pick that they received in exchange from the Clippers had made it possible for them to get the first pick. Dennis could not help but applaud how good the deal had been.

It was a pity, though, that things rarely go as planned. The Clippers had improved. The one of the first five draft picks had turned into the 11th pick. Dennis could say goodbye to the possibility of getting the first pick.

The Celtics would like nothing more than to see the Clippers fall apart. It would be best for the Celtics if they fell to the absolute bottom of the entire league. That way, the Celtics would be able to enjoy one of the first draft picks. The Celtics suffered the most from the Clipper’s improvement.

Dennis was infuriated thinking about how the value of his trade had depreciated.

Damn the Spurs. How did you lose? You should beat the Clippers right now! You’re losing intentionally! Yes, it must be intentional! No, I must write an appeal to the league and complain about you losing on purpose!

…

After beating the Spurs, the Clippers’ next opponent was the Rockets.

The last they played each other, the Rockets had scored a streak of three-pointers in overtime and defeated the Clippers.

At the moment, the Rockets were ranked first in the Western Conference. They were also number one in the entire league. They were ahead of the Warriors, the second place team, by five wins. Their chances of securing first place in the Western Conference were high.

In Houston, the head coach of the Rockets, Max, learned of the Clippers beating Spurs.

“The Spurs actually lost against the Clippers. They sent out a team of substitutes against them. It sure is puzzling. Although the Spurs team aged a year, there is still one month of the regular season left. There shouldn’t be a need to rest players yet,” the assistant coach nagged beside Max.

Max smiled and said, “You don’t understand that old fox, Gray. This isn’t about resting and rotating players, this is his plan. However, I never would have thought that he would actually fall into someone else’s trap.”

“Coach, I don’t understand,” the assistant coach said in confusion.

Max explained, “I used to work for the Spurs, so I know a little about Gray. I am guessing Gray tried to avoid overtime since the Clippers have been going into overtime way too much. Going into overtime once is like expending two games’ worth of stamina. There is also an increased risk of injury. That’s why Gray sent his substitutes into the match while he waited to play against the Clippers in overtime. He didn’t expect the game wouldn’t make it into overtime, so Gray’s plan fell through.”

“So that’s what happened!” Comprehension had just dawned upon the assistant coach.

After Max finished his explanation, he went into his own thoughts.

Although Gray, that old fox, failed in his plan, perhaps I should learn from him, Max thought.

Max was the master of the “run and gun” in the NBA. Besides that, his tactics were very modern. Back when the NBA still admired defense, he had already started using the run and gun tactic with his team. Now that the NBA had entered the small ball era, he created a magic ball theory, which was to give up the mid-range shot on offense to either go for a three-pointer or go below the basket. On defense, it was to continuously change the defenders to destroy the modern pick and roll strategy.

Max had a huge weakness: he did not really believe in role players. On his team, a lot of role players only played when his team was losing anyway. As he did not believe in role players, Max often used a seven-man lineup. He received a lot of criticism for this.

A regular NBA game was 48 minutes long. A team had five players on the court at the same time. This meant that if you added all of the players’ time in the game you would get 240 minutes. This was a fixed number.

If seven players rotated between each other, the average time a player was on the court was 34 minutes. If eight players rotated, the average time would decrease to 30 minutes. If ten players were to rotate, the average time of every player was only 24 minutes.

The difference between rotating ten players and seven players meant that every player would play ten minutes less. This also meant that every player would have an extra ten minutes’ rest every match so they would have more energy.

Of course, it was only theoretical data. In reality, the key players would spend more time in the game than the substitutes.

However, one thing was certain: the more players in the rotation lineup, the more people would be able to play in the game. This meant the players would be expending less energy.

Considering that there were 82 games in the regular season, with the addition of rigorous and competitive playoffs, it was a good thing for key players to have to expend less energy.

There is only one month in the regular season left. It’s about time to prepare for the playoffs. This season, we’ve used the seven-man rotation too much. There have been signs that some of our players may be injured soon. I should try to control this.

Since the Clippers won’t be making it to the playoffs, they won’t pose a threat to us. If we battled against them till overtime, we would lose more than we would gain. What’s more, we are sitting comfortably in It won’t be easy for the Warriors to catch up to us. Losing a game or two occasionally isn’t going to affect the big picture.

…

The Clippers defeating the Spurs was considered an upset. However, no one had expected that the Clippers could actually manage to defeat the top-ranked team in the entire league, the Rockets!

The Rockets had also sent out a starting lineup of substitutes. They had even called in their players playing in the development league to play over 20 minutes in the game.

No matter how weak the Clippers players were, they weren’t weak enough to lost to players from the development league. It was another game reminiscent of Tianji’s horse race against the king of Qi.

The Rockets did this because they did not want to waste their energy on overtime. After all, the Rockets played an entire season with a seven-man rotation. By the time they reached the last month of the regular season, the players would be in terrible condition. It would be much better for them to save some strength for the playoffs rather than battle against the Clippers in a couple of overtimes.

…

The Cleveland Cavaliers.

The head coach walked to the side of a strong player and asked, “Do you want to rest in the next game?”

The strong player was named Brown. He was the best player in the current NBA.

Brown heard his coach and looked puzzled. “What happened?”

“Our next opponent is L.A. Clippers,” the head coach said.

“I know some of the L.A. fans don’t like me, but they are mostly Lakers fans, not Clippers fans. Even if the fans don’t like me, games must still be played!” Brown answered.

“You don’t understand. In a previous game, the Clippers beat the Spurs because Spurs sent out an all-substitute team. In their last game, the Clippers beat the Rockets. The Rockets also sent out an all-substitute lineup. So I’m thinking that when we play against the Clippers, we should also rest a few of our key players. We should also start looking towards the playoffs now. Our target is the championship. As for our ranking in the regular season, that’s not as important,” the coach said.

One of the reasons why Brown was able to become the best player in the NBA was his intellect. He thought about it for a moment and immediately understood.

Brown nodded. “Our rankings aren’t really affected by our games against Western Conference teams. Among them, we should be wary of the Warriors and the Rockets, because we might play against them in the final. If we play two or three overtimes against an irrelevant team in the regular season, it would be an unnecessary expenditure.”

“Alright, then. In the next match, you will take a rest. By resting f this game, you will gain around five days of rest. Five days off is amazingly rare.”

…

Boston Celtics.

General Manager Dennis looked at the results of the previous day. He wanted to cry but had no tears.

In the past three games, the Clippers had beaten the Spurs, the Rockets, and the Cavaliers. Those were the strongest teams in the league.

More importantly, the three opponents had rested their key players and sent out their substitutes for the match. Due to this consecutive win streak, the Clippers moved up one place in the rankings. With that, the first round draft pick of the Clippers had further depreciated in value.

What is this? The Spurs sending out their substitutes, the Rockets sending out their substitutes, and the Cavaliers only sending out their substitutes! They’re all weakening their teams! They are clearly letting the Clippers win on purpose! Why do I feel like the entire league is going working against me!