Wow, it was like Myers broke out the worst laid plans of Skiles before this game, just to torment us.
Not including the 2 minutes of garbage time (should've been more than 2, but Myers kept the starters out even while the team was down twenty) here is the minutes distribution from Wednesday night's game:
Deng - 40
Gordon - 35
Wallace - 34
Hinrich - 33
Smith - 30
Nocioni - 18
Duhon - 14
Griffin - 8
Gray - 7
Thomas - 4
Noah - 4
Sefolosha - 2
Ugh. Ugh. Ugh.
Although Smith played well (although with his age/health it's never a good idea to play him 30 minutes anyway) it wasn't like Wallace (who defended Duncan well but wasn't rebounding), Nocioni (maybe his worst night of the season: 1-11 shooting and a -25 raw +/-), or Aaron bleepin Gray were playing so good that it gave good reason to not play Thomas and Noah. Griffin received minutes due to early foul trouble from Gordon and Hinrich, but I'd have waited for 3 more players to be out with foul trouble before Grif saw the court.
One of the indications from Pax in his radio interview was that a problem he had this season with Skiles was that he wasn't giving Thomas, Sefolosha, and Noah regular minutes. Hopefully Pax's interview with Myers' colleague (and leading candidate) Jim Boylan included sitting down and watching this awful substitution work by Myers, while saying "hey Jim, don't do this if you want the job."
Because tonight should certainly eliminate Myers from any candidate list. Maybe he knew that going in, and figured as his role of assistant it served him better through the rest of the season to throw the vets a bone and play them a ton in spite of the individual or team results. I can't think of any reason based on the ability to win this game.
It was a road game against the Spurs with an interim-interim coach, and I suppose it was almost by design that this game was a throwaway in the first game post-Skiles. I'll try and forget it happened, though management going forward can look to it (and most of this season thus far) to see what not playing the young bigs can bring, whether playing them more winds up helping or not.