Forgive him Warriors brass, though he knows exactly what he is doing.

I have zero doubt that if asked privately, Golden State head coach Keith Smart would have major qualms playing Monta Ellis the gargantuan minutes he has played over the past few weeks. However, one of the fundamental flaws of the structure of most teams is that the people running the team on the floor and the people running the team from the box (or courtside seats, whatever) often carry dramatically different goals. In most cases, this leads to coaches that look at the short-term at the expense of some potential long-term success of a player or the team as a whole.

To that point, it proves awfully hard to blame coaches, as their leashes are often much shorter and more tenuous than the players they coach. Furthermore, players can and typically are judged on far more than wins and losses while it can boil down to something that simple for the staff.

Keith Smart has embodied that reality this year since his status for the 2011-12 is even more nebulous than most considering the statements made by ownership and the nature of their messaging. The fact of the matter remains that Lacob and Guber have talked about making a splash and possess remarkably little in terms of tradeable assets to make that impact through a change in players. To make matters worse for Smart, I’m sure ownership feels even more pressure to appease fans after a season that failed to reach heightened expectations after the David Lee deal and a team that has already been eliminated from playoff contention. Even as the team touts the improvement over last year’s dismal record, it seems hard to see that generating the requisite enthusiasm desired by new ownership.

On top of that, Smart is managing a team that simply has very little quality in terms of a bench, particularly when it comes to the backcourt. Reggie Williams has been underutilized for most of the season, which has been one of the sore points for me this season. He has talent and actually complements both Ellis and Stephen Curry fairly well because of his ballhandling and scoring. Beyond him, you have Acie Law (who must have incriminating of photos of Mr. Smart considering how much play he gets for his “quality”) and a whole lot of nothing. From that angle, it seems more justifiable to give both Monta and Dorell Wright heavy minutes- after all, who else beyond them and Curry can keep the team afloat at the PG/SG/SF positions?

One of the lingering effects of making both a four-for-one trade and the Maggette deal has been a deep team suddenly losing a shocking amount of rotation players. Couple that with letting two guards in CJ Watson and Anthony Morrow sign elsewhere without matching their deals has yielded a team without backups.

That said, the fact of the matter remains that just about every game reaches a point of no return where even if every single thing goes right, one team will win and the other will lose. We can argue semantics about the time before this point until everyone is blue in the face, but the inarguable point persists: Coach Smart should never have starters in once a game is out of reach. This reality gets compounded by the truth that the Warriors starters play an ungodly portion of the minutes when the result is still in doubt, so it’s not like they would get rusty with a few extra minutes on the pine. What grinds my gears about this even more is the issue that basketball has injuries at seemingly random intervals, though that time bomb only ticks when a player is on the court (or living in Portland, either way).

In economics, concepts like marginal cost and marginal benefit can help explain decision-making in a wide variety of circumstances. Basically, the idea is that each choice has positives and negatives, particularly when compared with other available choices. By weighing these different pros and cons, a reasonable person can come to a choice that hopefully fits their criteria the best. In this case, there are no benefits to keeping starters like Ellis and Wright on the floor once the game is effectively over. Team chemistry does not need to be buoyed by garbage time and stat padding does not count as a valid reason either. On the other side, even a miniscule risk of injury dwarfs the potential benefits in such a way that sitting the players stands as the only valid choice to make. Players like Monta (an underrated team player/leader off the court) and Wright (who would never want to look a minutes gift horse in the mouth) will not and cannot take the initiative on this problem.

Now, the above points remain and justify Smart’s decision through his different lens, especially when coupled with the brash optimism that many coaches show in believing that even unwinnable games can still be turned in the last few minutes. Regardless, management has the right, duty, and obligation to take decisions like that out of the hands of those who would make them for reasons beyond what is best for the organization.

As such, the request falls on the brass: Monta Ellis should never play 48 minutes in a game where one team is up 10+ points in the final minute or two, regardless of which side of the ledger Golden State is on.  Ellis was already hurt once in the last minute and a half of a game- here’s hoping management is smart enough to not let it even be possible again.