Yep. The first team fell back into mediocrity.
We didn't seem to need a point guard the other day, but I sure was missing Rose today.
Irritated too that Thibs took so long to give McBride minutes (he was a tight ass with Obi too), even though the futility of the game was obvious.
One ray of light: Once again Barrett was good and aggressive.
No matter McBride's limitations and inexperience, the period in which Walker went from exile to playing consecutive games of what, 35 + minutes a night was to me, the joy of Kemba having found some semblance of his mojo notwithstanding, INSANE. Like in the playoffs last year, when Derrick finally broke down from being tasked with way too many minutes, as Elfrid was finally buried on the bench.
I am a Thibs enthusiast, and believe in his discipline and vision, but he has long had a rep for running many of his players into the fucking ground. Was he responsible for Derrick Rose's catastrophic injuries with the Bulls. I don't know if that is fair, but he does ride his starters hard.
Having said that...
Julius is down from 37 minutes a game to 35 this year, and Obi is up from 12 to 16. RJ is down from 35 to 32.
Fournier and Burks are averaging roughly 29 and 28.
So Thibs does seem to be trying to be less obsessive with his minutes.
Then again, with injuries and COVID protocols, things have been pretty bonkers as far as rotations.
As for McBride, he had that one breakthrough game, against Houston on 12-16 [15-2-9 with 4 steals] and looked ready to make the next step in his ascent, when testing positive for COVID took him out of the rotation for two weeks, and Thibs seemed to lose confidence in him since January 2nd, when Deuce fell out of the rotation.