The most often cited complaint about the departed Scott Skiles was his rotation.  He played Duhon and Wallace too much, and the young'ns too infrequently.  By doing this, he was playing for here and now, trying to exploit the consistent talent he had at the expense of future talent.  Fans always hate this.

I'm no Boylan-supporter.  He's a better coach than I'd be, but worse than others.  Overall, not the worst coach in the league, but certainly not in the top 20.  When he took the job for the remainder of the season, he said that he would depend on the veterans to save the season from being a complete non-factor in the weakest East in recent memory.  He stuck to that.  Until everyone got injured.

Since then and even before everyone got injured, the paradigm had shifted.  Wallace was no longer the wily, experienced, athletic hustler-rebounder extraordinaire, he was a broke-down, overplayed black hole on offense.  I don't even blame Wallace.  He's being played like a 28 year old, but he's 32.  He would be more effective and have more energy if he had more rest.  In the past few games, some of this has emerged.  Joe Smith's rest is also becoming more of a priority.  The players that were supposed to be saving the season weren't significantly better than the young kids that got benched for them.  Noah started playing a little more.  Intermittent outages of Kirk and Ben became opportunities to see that a rebounding, defending guard is something we not only have, but might be useful.

In the past few games, the youth that has been considered an asset of potential has become a plain, right-now asset.  The fans rejoice, and Tyrus saves a game with heroics.  Never thought that the kid that got buried on the rotation would be so lauded by my man Sam, but he is.

Maybe this year is lost if we can't get out of the 7 or 8 seed, but the future looks bright.  Far from having too few players, we might just have too many that need playing time to develop.  I think, for one, that Boylan is realizing that even Noah's supremely messed up shooting form beats Wallace's airball jumpers.  Wallace might just not be so tired if we did that, too.  We didn't get suckered into long extensions for a team that doesn't look to be going anywhere, reminding me too much of the Pacers of a few years ago, re-uping Austin Croshere for huge money.  Maybe they're good, but the team just doesn't seem to center around them as much as that money says it should.