@ralster
You’re on the right track explaining Frank’s high minutes and presence, when the game was more or less out of reach. I’ll add a few reasons.
High minutes in a hard fought game that Frank is having to play to win every possession on both ends of the floor are hard on Frank, but high minutes in a game against a lesser team with a big lead, where Frank can play at about 7/10s is really just a work out for him, probably easier than a lot of practices this time of year.
Frank has one side of his game that still needs polishing. He needs to become smoother at shifting his transmission between drive/shoot and involve others. What he needs is repetitions doing it smoothly against an unfamiliar scrimmage opponent. That’s what NU amounted to the second half. Frank is almost certainly stale at learning to get better at this in practice after four years, because he knows all his perimeter pals, some for several years. Frank needs to become as Psi about seamlessly moving between playmaking and going and getting a basket, as he already is between jump shooting and driving. This seamlessness, i.e., where he is always a threat to do either, is all that now separates him from being one of those rare, short NBA long term PGs that can shoot, drive or playmake at any moment from 28 feet in. This guy can shoot lights out. He can drive lights out. He can get up with giants. He can guard. He can help. He can even rebound. And he has an NBA afterburner that he doesn’t even use with these D1 college guys. But he is not yet a seamless threat between involving others and creating himself. These minutes in the second half of the NU game are how he can take those incremental steps to mastering that.
Self has a lot of bodies to develop, if we are to rack a title and make a deep run in March. These guys can’t develop as well if Frank is on the bench and another less proficient point guard is running the show and not running it efficiently. Devonte has already been developed as an effective replacement at point. Its even arguable that Devonte is the better natural point in the sense of being able to seamlessly shift between shoot/drive and involving the others. So: having Frank in playing 2/3s speed the right way, and enabling the development of Vick, Josh, and Svi outside kills two birds with one stone. It lets Frank get polished, and it keeps the offense well greased for the newbies to learn how it is supposed to go when done right.
No doubt Self would be resting more Frank some more, if Devonte hadn’t come out of the blocks in lingerie. Devonte is the guy that needs protecting and resting some early. Now the Devonte seems to be rounding into shape, I suspect we will see Frank getting more rest and then board rats will be asking why Devonte is playing so many minutes?
All in all Self seems to have this process well in hand. If we see Frank playing 38 mpg in a 2 in 3 weekend situation in January with a big lead; then I will either begin to worry, or assume something is very wrong with one of the other perimeter guys.
