One of the major irritants from Golden State's 2009-10 season was removed this off-season when management got rid of any swingman who the coaching staff would be tempted to play out of position at power forward. Seeing Corey Maggette attempt to play the position, whether out of necessity or Don Nelson's “creativity” proved futile and frustrating for all involved.

As such, this season marks a transition in terms of thinking about minute distribution for the Warriors- we can finally move from the SF/PF limbo area to a more traditional bigs/swingmen/guards paradigm that works for the most part.

The unfortunate effect of this as the chips have fallen this season has been the fact that the bigs have suffered a few injuries at both the starter and rotation level with less players to replace them. However, one benefit has been the ability to be more traditional with the swingman rotation.

This shift takes new importance with the re-emergence of Reggie Williams. In the four games since Stephen Curry has been out with a sprained ankle, Williams has taken a greater offensive role to go along with his increased minutes. In fact, he has shot a remarkable 17 of 27 from three point range during those four games- that’s more than 12 points a game just from deep on over 50% shooting. Williams’ game helps the Warriors play since his scoring can either be more or less of a focus for the team.

In fact, Williams said after the game against Minnesota that both Keith Smart and other players on the team were encouraging him to shoot more during the game itself, relaying the story of Monta Ellis passing him the ball and yelling “shoot it!” as he did so. (Williams drove it anyway). This scoring flexibility coupled with an all-around game makes him a natural fit as the fourth perimeter player when the team is at full strength.

The problem here is that while Smart seems wholly aware of and acts concerned about the heavy minutes his starting perimeter players play, he has done almost nothing to change it.  Ellis and Dorell Wright currently sit at #2 and #4 in the entire league in terms of minutes played per game. Curry is further down on the list, yet that is only because of his 11-minute game against the Spurs when he got hurt in the first place. Take that game out and he is right around the top 10 for PG’s in the category despite two other sub-30 minute outings.

While small sample sizes clearly play a part in this, recent games have shown that Smart’s actions do not match his words. In the game that preceded his post-game presser where he talked about playing the starters less minutes,  Smart played Ellis all 48 minutes despite the game being completely in hand with an 11-point lead and 2:30 to go.

The aforementioned Wright and Ellis played into the last minute of the game, as did the still-injured David Lee. Minnesota never got closer than nine points in the last four minutes of regulation. The simple fact that keeping players on the floor makes them more susceptible to injury (such as an elbow to the face like Monta got earlier in the game) should be enough to makes the decision a no-brainer even without the insane minutes those guys are playing.

Whenever Curry comes back from his sprained ankle, it will be Smart’s clearest chance to show that he is committed to using a bench since he has spoken highly of both Acie Law and Williams in the last few days, especially following Tuesday’s win. While divvying up minutes for the few times the rotation is entirely healthy feels like an excessive exercise given the team’s injury history and present, how much and when the core players play should play an important role both this season and down the line.

An aside on David Lee’s elbow: After the game, a few of us talked to David Lee about his elbow (NOTE: this is also when Sam Amick took the picture he posted to his Twitter feed- I will not link to it here, but you can find it if you like nasty stuff). What worried me most is that when I asked him if it was feeling better, David indicated that it was not, thought it periodically felt better and that they hoped it was healing from the inside out. Considering it already looks like the Warriors do not have a ton to play for in terms of the playoffs this year as well as the fact that  Lee is playing “one armed” by his own admission, isn’t it time to give him the rest his ailing elbow/arm so sorely needs?

Feel free to e-mail Daniel at Daniel.Leroux@realgm.com or follow him at twitter.com/DannyLeroux