He hasn't added the weight back because he is getting extended playing time to keep it off. The weight staying off is a direct result of the playing time; not vice versa.

Unless a person has a physical ailment that causes them to add weight, weight is added by eating and eating the wrong foods. It is kept off by eating the proper foods in the proper proportions.

Exercise can help lose weight and keep weight off. However, you can exercise all you want but if you eat foods that add weight and eat too much food you will add weight regardless of how much playing time that you have. Even if you don't gain weight because of the exercise if you eat the wrong foods your body fat content will rise and it will negatively affect your athletic competitiveness.

All NBA arenas have exercise rooms, so if you are not playing you have plenty of energy to use the the exercise equipment to keep the weight off.

Maxiell gained weight because he ate improperly not because he didn't get more minutes.

I originally posted this on the Toronto game thread, but I decided to repost here because I would really like to make clear my position regarding AJ's playing time and what I believe is Sheed's involvement in determining the same.

Not that posting it on multiple threads will make it clearer, but it seems to me that it will have more prime time exposure going forward being on this thread and therefore hopefully reduce further confusion regarding my position on this whole matter.

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It seem increasingly clear to me that my attempt to explain certain things is being less than successful. However, I won't give up in an attempt to make my points clear enough to be understood.

In any professional organization you have the administrators and non administrators.

Head basketball coaches are more like administrators. It is not their responsibility to get involved in all the detail goings on. That is why they have assistant coaches. Coaches who specialize in a particular area like defense, offense, rebounding etc.

Also there are very few head coaches who are proficient at all aspect of the game, but rather are better in some areas and weaker in others. They then rely on other personnel reporting to them to aid them in making personnel decisions.

It is the same way in a company like Apple. For example the head of the iPod and iPhone groups is not going to be proficient in all the areas of designing developing manufacturing and selling of these items, but is going to rely heavily on the input of those reporting to him/her who have more expertise in a certain area. For example the Group VP may be strong in marketing and a great administrator but weak when it comes to Engineering. Rarely will you ever find someone who is a great engineer who is also a great Marketing person. It does happen, but it is rare.

Now the assistant coaches who report to the head coach work directly with the players in their area of responsibility as a group. This is very helpful to the head coach.

However the assistant coaches don't actually get onto the floor and play during practice or in games, except in the rare case like a player/coach. This is akin to the department managers in an organization like IBM, Apple etc. They don't get involved in the detailed supervision of the individual employees. They leave that up to their supervisors. Now the supervisors also get involved in the detailed day to to day activity in the departments, like the people that report to them do. This is akin to someone like Sheed who would be the supervisor; i.e., mentor of AJ. Sheed gets involved with the on court action but also more closely monitors a AJ's activity and progress than do the assistant coaches or Flipper.

Now in professionally run organizations, what happens is that while the group/section head has a budget and is responsible for that whole group/section, he/she relies on his/her department managers for input with respect to what is going on in the departments of his/her group/section. Those department managers rely heavily on the input of their supervisors; i.e. in this case Sheed, in making departmental personnel changes.

If Flipper is not relying on and using the input of his assistant coaches and his experienced players as a very strong guide in making personnel decisions he is not doing his job correctly.

I hope this explained the situation more clearly.

If not, I will glad to try again to clarify how things work with respect to personnel decisions in a professional organization.

The head coach decides who he puts in the game. Flip is the head coach. Its his responsibility, and nobody elses. When we lose in the upcoming playoffs for not having enough bigs in the rotation who can play well, its Flip that will be fired, not Rasheed Wallace.

Yes it his final decision. "The buck stops here" thing.

If he doesn't factor in the input of his coaches, Joe D. and the senior Pistons players, he is a fool.

I have not read anywhere or heard anywhere from a credible media source or a Pistons employee player or otherwise that AJ should be in the regular rotation at this point. It seems to me that if there was some kind of consensus among other Pistons players and the Pistons assistant coaches and Joe D. that AJ should be in the regular rotation at this point we would have heard something about it.

What about insurance?

Do you want to rely on Bresec to be the 3rd big in the playoffs if someone goes down with a sprain?

Good point. I think that is why they are throwing him into the mix here and there. They want to see if he can help.

I believe that the current decision to not put AJ into the regular rotation is being made with the input of the Pistons best basketball minds.

I am willing to accept that decision.

How the insurance factor is figured in I don't know. It is still relatively early in the season so I am willing to wait and see what happens between now and the playoffs, before criticizing the current rotation patterns with respect to AJ.

I would however personally like to see AA get more burn. It looks like Stuckey will give C-Bill enough time for R&R on the bench. Rip can go all day and night, but still I would like to see AA get more time because he has already shown that he can play well enough to get the additional minutes.

I certainly wouldn't. Still, if Rasheed goes down, we're done regardless.

Oh, which ones do you talk to?