Caitlin, Wemby, playoffs and some perspective on why resting her aggressively is good.
After playing 72 games in Season 1, last season, Victor Wembanyama was ruled out due to thrombosis half way into the season for the rest of the season only playing 46/82 games.
The Spurs played Wemby for 64 of 82 games in the regular season this season (would be even lower if not trying to reach the awards minimum).
In the 64 games he played, he played only 29.1 minutes per game.
In total he played only 47.3% of the team’s minutes this season. He still won DPOY, was third in MVP voting and didn’t lose a bit of popularity.
Now it’s playoff time and he played 49 minutes in game 1 against a hostile physical defence which is amongst the best in NBA history and put up 41/24 and won the game for his team against an unbeatable OKC team which was 8-0 before this and now played 37 minutes in Game 2 putting up 21/17/6 with 5 stocks. Most people watching the playoffs agree he is the clear best player in the world now.
If your goal is to win above anything else and have a generational prospect coming off a year long injury who has a not small chance of getting injured or reaggravating past healed injuries if they go full tilt for 40 games in a brutally physical league, I think it’s a defensible idea to treat them super cautiously and coddle their health.
I’d rather Caitlin feel fully energised and locked in go full tilt walls to the fall 39 min and put up 28/12/10 to win playoff games which are on a demanding schedule rather than her being exhausted come playoff time and running on fumes after a long recovery and season or worse, injured for the playoffs.
I am not advocating a full Wemby regime. What I’m saying is, we have the depth. Treating her cautiously and resting her whenever possible when we can otherwise win is great strategy imo.
And if you have to do this sneakily because you can’t just write load management in all caps on the injury report, god bless you.
I’d go as far as to say, if you can block the outside narratives out, winning a regular season game without CC is better than winning it with her because you both get her rest and secure the W.
At the end of the day, the goal has to be win a championship above all, both for the Fever and CC.