Nurse ponders mixing up his rotations

ent personnel is ridiculous.

But it is now up to Nurse to figure out how to mix and match players from two separate groups, because five on and then five more isn’t working.

The coach has already toyed a bit with different substitution patterns, but he’s too often been caught with five backups on the floor and it’s not working well. Some nights, the subs hold their own, but on too many occasions so far this season, they’ve struggled and haven’t helped the starting group enough.

On Sunday, he sounded more than willing to discard the distinct groups approach.

“I’m going to have to look at the tape before we decide that,” he said, when asked if he could stick with the five backups playing at the same time idea. “Obviously, that’s two games in arow (Friday and Sunday) and a couple of stints (in Sunday’s loss to Milwaukee) that they really weren’t as productive as they need to be.

“They don’t need to set the world on fire, they just need to hold serve a little better. Some really good players there that aren’t playing well enough collectively and individually. We’ve got to get them going.”

Nurse has to decide just how drastic any change will be.

Does he stagger the minutes for the starters better so that one or two are always on the court? Does he move someone from the starting lineup to the backup group for more balance and a change in roles? Does he try a little bit of both? It’s not all on the coach, of course.

Miles hasn’t played well often enough, Anunoby hasn’t taken an expected leap and Valanciunas can’t give the second unit the kind of athletic boost that Siakam did.

All of them have to be better, regardless of how the coach deploys them.

“We’re still figuring out our roles and our rotations,” Van- Vleet said. “I think the hardest part is everyone wanted to take a leap forward. We all had great years last year. I signed a contract, OG had a great year as a starter, we come back better players, but the roles are different so you have to figure out how to maximize the minutes you get, and just trying to stay even-keeled and go out there.

“It’s a process. We’ll figure it out as the year goes on. I’m not too concerned about it.”