LOS ANGELES – With back-to-back games to open the regular season tonight against the Los Angeles Lakers and Wednesday against the Utah Jazz, watching the players’ minutes has become a challenge for Dallas Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle.
Not only will Carlisle hope to guide his team to a victory tonight. He also has to make sure he doesn’t play anyone an inordinate amount of minutes against the Lakers, because that player likely won’t be able to give he Mavs any quality minutes against the Jazz.
“I don’t like running anybody’s minutes in the high 30’s,’’ Carlisle said. “Especially with us playing a back-to-back tomorrow night.’’
While the back-to-back is an issue, the Mavs-Lakers game will be on TNT, which could be a benefit to the Mavs in terms of players receiving additional rest and possibly having some extra gas when it comes time to play the Jazz.
“It’s a national TV game -- long timeouts,’’ Carlisle said. “So that’s a positive mitigating factor if we have to play guys a little bit longer.
“I want to keep energy in the game. It’s going to be hard for even our energetic guys to be energetic if they’re playing super big minutes.’’
-- Dwain Price
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