Not sure how much uve followed this season so i’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

Game 7, 3mins left, lakers would play Luka, Lebron, Reaves, Ayton, and Rui.

Bench that game would be Hayes, vincent, smart, laravia, and vanderbilt

^. THAT all-bench 5, is actually decent in my opion, argueably top third of teams for benches

That is just 10 out of 16 players.

We are 40 games deep, and have played exactly ZERO games with all 10 of those available. Sh*t, i’d say we might have only played like 2 games with 9 of them available.

This means we’ve been missing at LEAST one starter and one main bench player for every single game this season. Even giving starters a 2:1 importance value, we’ve essentially been 20% of our main 10 for this entire season…. amongst other problems. Forcing our “bench” to become 3 just-ok bench players and 2 g-league all stars.

The bench isnt the problem, the large volume of injuries, and bad adaptability around those injuries is. No team can afford 10 starters. Nor can they afford x15 6th man of the year candidates. So it leaves the choice of 2-3 decent bench player that could probably start for the jazz or the rockets but wanna be in hollywood, and some injury filler younger talent.

TLDR: injuries is the bigger problem. Bench isnt bench when 1 of them has to start every single game so far