Why don't Euroleague coaches shorten their rotation?

[NorCal]

Hi everyone,

This is a question I've always had as it has never made sense to me. In the NBA I've always thought that most coaches overplay their stars during the regular season especially when you consider how many games the teams play and the fact that the games are very long and the traveling on the road can wear down player's energy as well. I've always thought this must be attributed to marketing/ticket sales or simply that home court advantage is fairly important in the NBA playoffs. However, the rotation of playing your star players more in the playoffs makes sense as each game is so important.

My question for all of you is why don't more Euroleague coaches shorten their rotation and play their stars more in the playoffs? From what I've seen, the Euroleague coaches still generally limit their stars minutes even when they get to the playoffs. With so few games it would seem to make sense to play your best guys more.

[pohani komarac]

Euro coaches say they wannt to keep high defensive rytham. By Zmago Sagadin theory no player can give 100% more then 2 min so you can see here hockey like rotations by many coachs. Also most teams have equal level players. Richest teams buy all best on market as there is huge gap in budgets and it goes on on evrey level

lets say CSK in NBA it would look like this

Paul
R. Allen
L. James
Love
Howard

Bench: M. Conley, J. Bayless, B. Gordon, M. Barnes, T. Ariza, Scola, R. Anderson, Okafor, Camby

Barca:

D. Williams
Kobe
Pirce
Nowitzki
Chandler

Bench: Fisher, Brooks, Durant, Butler, David West, D. Jordan, Milicic

................................................

[NorCal]

Euro coaches say they wannt to keep high defensive rytham. By Zmago Sagadin theory no player can give 100% more then 2 min so you can see here hockey like rotations by many coachs. Also most teams have equal level players. Richest teams buy all best on market as there is huge gap in budgets and it goes on on evrey level

lets say CSK in NBA it would look like this

Paul
R. Allen
L. James
Love
Howard

Bench: M. Conley, J. Bayless, B. Gordon, M. Barnes, T. Ariza, Scola, R. Anderson, Okafor, Camby

Barca:

D. Williams
Kobe
Pirce
Nowitzki
Chandler

Bench: Fisher, Brooks, Durant, Butler, David West, D. Jordan, Milicic

................................................

Thanks for the explanation Pohani.

I definitely can understand and appreciate the 2nd point you make about the richest teams buying all the best talent but as for the first point- it would seem that hockey like rotations that are frequent would lead to games being more fast paced than they currently are. Maybe that's just my perception or perhaps some teams just don't want to speed the game up.

[Billy Bounce]

I think the main reason is fouls ( and inconsistent referring )

If a starter gets 2 fouls in 1-st quarter he goes to bench almost automatically . 3 fouls in the second quarter means a bench till the whole half. The same goes for 4th foul in the 3-rd quarter.

Coaches usually trust his players not to make stupid fouls being in a foul-trouble, but have zero trust in consistence of refs calls . Refs coming from different leagues with different levels of contact allowed doesn't make thing better.

[Jazz]

I could be wrong but 10 years ago were rotations in Euroleague not a bit shorter than now? Also if you look at boxscore from some domestic leagues (eg Italy) you will still see many teams frequently playing with really just 6 or 7 players and Cantu played Euroleague with a fairly short rotation despite having several veterans.

[mishuna]

I think there are a couple of reasons for what you mentioned.

1) Generally speaking, the majority of Europe's biggest stars are either A) Aging or B) a defensive liability.

2) Since every game in the Euroleague matters alot more than a single game in the NBA, there's far less tolerance to poor performances, and coaches will go with whatever lineup works that night.

3) Coaches in Europe are highly respected, even by the 'star' players, which is why point (2) is possible.

4) You've mentioned the Playoffs. Most Europeans teams play twice a week(only exception was Maccabi this year). Which means, those teams are not accustomed to playing twice within 3 days. So in the playoffs in particular, it's important to control the minutes and make sure the team remains at 100% intensity at all times. A small lapse in concentration or intentisty, and the game is lost.

[Joško Poljak Fan]

Imo a large portion of that goes to different playing styles.

The following statement is a generalisation, in order to showcase both extremes. There are both kinds of teams on both sides of the ocean.
Set plays in europe in general are much more strict in terms of players freedom, that ends up with setting numerous screens, cutting through them, more ball circulation and off the ball movement compared to iso-scheme that some of NBA teams (can) afford with their star players. Both versions in an extreme cases are like day and night when it comes to tiredness.
Along that players roles are divided differently, specialists aren't that common in europe, meaning PF's, C's are spreading the offense further as in NBA, with in general better ability to nail a long shots.
Those specialisations in some cases also mean a player designated to score in some cases aren't expected to give 110% in defense in NBA, while that's out of a question to a larger degree in europe (not trying to sound offensive to anyone, but those are nevertheless words of Toni Kukoć, not mine)
With more physical approach in terms of screen contacts players do get tired faster in europe even if the athleticism differences theoreticaly wouldn't exist (while they're obvious and in favour of NBA athletes).

More of those noticable differences that might influence that;
In europe practices play bigger role and are in general noticably tougher, in NBA most teams can't afford them to the same extent due to uncomparably tougher traveling schedules. Due to ammount of games played NBA isn't any easier regarding fatique if anyone would consider i'm implying any such thing though. Due to tougher practices, that also don't have the same meaning/importance to both worlds (type Iverson Pratice Youtube :P ) coaches might be spreading out playing time among the whole team. Of course that also varies a lot from one team to another.

and one more, that I can't really understand to be honest... basicaly it must be a cultural thing, that goes deep in US basketball philosophy.
First lineup actualy means a lot in the US, while it barely means anything in europe (lots of coaches actualy started to put US players in the 1st lineup just because they've noticed some of them perform way better compared to coming of the bench - psychology rules ), while 2nd quarter is basicaly considered a trash time, while in europe in general most coaches will try to find just about whatever lineup mixed from starters and bench players at whatever possible time to gain some result advantage. As euroleague's schedule is way shorter that's even that more obvious there, as just about any game counts.
Not having to stick up to those "general NBA rotations", first-lineup philosophy etc. consequently makes a lot of difference looking at the rotations overall.

Definately differences in europe are huge, regarding this topic, Obradović with Panathinaikos could "accidentaly" sit every single player in PAO rotation within the 5 minutes while as mentioned before some teams basicaly played whole euroleague by rotating 7-8 players.

[Kwijibo]

Euro coaches say they wannt to keep high defensive rytham. By Zmago Sagadin theory no player can give 100% more then 2 min so you can see here hockey like rotations by many coachs. Also most teams have equal level players. Richest teams buy all best on market as there is huge gap in budgets and it goes on on evrey level

lets say CSK in NBA it would look like this

Paul
R. Allen
L. James
Love
Howard

Bench: M. Conley, J. Bayless, B. Gordon, M. Barnes, T. Ariza, Scola, R. Anderson, Okafor, Camby

Barca:

D. Williams
Kobe
Pirce
Nowitzki
Chandler

Bench: Fisher, Brooks, Durant, Butler, David West, D. Jordan, Milicic

................................................

I want to know who is who in the bench

[JGX]

Distribution of talent on Euroleague teams is much more even than on NBA teams.

Also, fewer timeouts in Euroleague games.