When Bulls coach Tom Thibodeau shakes hands with Blazers counterpart Terry Stotts before Friday's game, he might want to ask Stotts how Portland keeps rolling out the same lineup game after game. Like Thibodeau, Stotts leans heavily on his starting lineup, yet his players absorb the heavy minutes seemingly without repercussions. If player availability were really under a coach's control, Thibodeau would certainly love to discover the secret.
Stotts has been more egregious than Thibodeau when it comes to pushing the minutes of his starters, though the coaches are more similar than different in that regard. Over the past three years, the Blazers have ranked 30th, 28th and 30th, in terms of average minutes per reserve. Thibodeau's Bulls have finished 24th and 25th the past two years, respectively, but have moved up to 20th this season despite the ongoing injury plague in Chicago. The injury issue is where the coaches differ. Last season, the Blazers used just two different starting lineups all season, and had four players start all 82 games, though this season Stotts has already used three different starting lineups. The Bulls, meanwhile, rolled out 17 different starting lineups last season, and this season the total has already climbed to six.
There is a good reason Stotts has been so reluctant to go to the reserves: his benches the past two seasons have not been good. As for Thibodeau, despite the constant upheaval in his starting lineup, he has managed to extract extraordinary value from his reserve units. And he's done it more with quality than quantity.