Tuesday night, Mikal Bridges played nearly 40 minutes against the Pistons in a Nets win. Wednesday night, Brooklyn coach Jacque Vaughn started Bridges, Cam Thomas and Royce O’Neale and played them most or all of the first quarter against Milwaukee and the game was competitive, 32-31 Bucks at the end of 12 minutes.
Then Vaughn sat those three the rest of the night, a game Brooklyn eventually lost 144-122.
That decision kept Bridges’ consecutive game streak alive — 422 games, he has never missed an NBA game — but was not happy, as he told Zach Braziller of the New York Post.
“The streak is, I guess, for everyone else to talk about. But I don’t just get in there for the streak,” Bridges said. “I get in there to play the game and because I want to go out there and win. I don’t go in there to just sub in, get the streak and whatever. I just want to play.”
Vaughn said Bridges only played because of the streak. It wasn’t just those three, the Nets didn’t play Spencer Dinwiddie, Dorian Finney-Smith, Cam Johnson and Nic Claxton, all of whom played the night before against the Pistons. It’s been common in back-to-backs for teams to play their stars in the game they are more likely to win and accept the higher likelihood of a loss in a game they may well have not won anyway.
“My thought was getting a feel and pulse of the game. Mikal played 40 minutes last night and so the thought was it wouldn’t be wise for me to continue and go down this path and have him play 40 minutes again,” Vaughn said. “I ran Cam (Johnson), Royce (O’Neale), and Mikal pretty long in the first quarter. Just envisioned at the end of the night that I didn’t want them touching 40 minutes again. That’s really what it boiled down to.”
Nets fans were not happy with the team’s decision after the game.
Last night's attendance was 18,199, one of the biggest if not the biggest crowds ever at Barclays Center for a Nets game. NBA capacity for the arena is 17,732, meaning 467 standing room.
— NetsDaily (@NetsDaily) December 28, 2023
hey @BrooklynNets - this is the email i just sent the ticket people. you should be absolutely ashamed of throwing away that game last night. the fans, the players and the league deserve better #NetsWorld pic.twitter.com/6JIk6fEytP
— Ray (@RaymondSultan) December 28, 2023
Decisions like this by a team also could dramatically impact the gambling and fantasy markets. If a bettor knew in advance about the move — and Vaughn subtly hinted at it pregame — he or she would have had an enormous edge on the market and could have made a killing. You can be sure someone with the league office called Vaugnn and the Nets about this.
This situation also points to something often under-discussed — it is usually the team, not the player, that pushes for nights off and rest. Players often take the brunt of fan frustration, but most of the time, the rest is ordered by the team’s physical training staff, using metrics from wearables and game tracking data to determine when they believe a player is fatigued and more prone to injuries. Players are not fans of it, but have largely come to accept it as reality.
We will see how the Nets respond to this, but don’t expect any first quarter only games from any teams again this season.
