MT: Minutes were a problem for Kobe last year, as Byron Scott admitted was his fault early in the season when Bryant was playing 35 per game. How many minutes should Kobe play this year? Vitti: We don’t know. If he plays 25 minutes, there’s less chance he gets hurt than if he plays 35 minutes. But the 35 minutes, in terms of the shoulder injury had nothing to do with it. I think Byron is going above and beyond by taking the heat. If he played (Bryant) one minute more than he should have, or 10 minutes more, then OK. But the fact is that the injury was trauma-related. Somebody came down on his shoulder. We did a review of all our injuries last year, and all of the time-loss injuries were trauma-related – people running into other people: stepping on their feet, running into them, etc. The two that weren’t trauma-related were Ryan Kelly straining his hamstring the second practice of training camp. Byron was a new coach with us. We didn’t know how much he was going to do, and he did a lot. You could make an argument that we could have looked at Ryan and (limited him). What may be our fault is that we should have took a better look at him. If we knew how tough training camp was going to be, and very quickly said, “Ryan we may have to hold you back.” But he got hurt early in the second practice. And then Jordan Hill missed five games with a hip flexor strain. He always had issues with that hip flexor. That can happen to anybody. Everything else was trauma-related and not minutes-related. We have an eye in the sky* and every game we know how many accelerations and decelerations that every player has, and the trajectory of those: left, right, front, back. From that, we can tell the average speed that that player played at and how much distance they travelled. That’s going to give us a number that’s important to us, and that number we’re going to call “load.” Every game we look at the load that we put on a player. Then we’re going to take that number and divide it by the minutes they played. And that number reveals us their intensity. If we see a direct linear relationship between load and intensity, we’re good. We’re in a green zone and can keep pushing that player. If we see load going up and intensity starting to plateau, that puts us in a yellow zone that gets our attention, and we have to do something like cutting back his minutes or training. If we really see a dip, then they’re in the red zone. Now we really feel they’re susceptible to injury. We’re looking at some other technologies that give us similar information, and we monitor our players in their way with the science and analytics that are out there right now. *SportsVU software tracks player movement during games from data obtained by six cameras installed in the catwalks of every NBA arena. MT: OK Gary, I’ll give it a shot. I’m with it. Meanwhile, you have a young player, 20-year-old Julius Randle, who’s already modifying his diet and has lost a lot of weight over the last several months. How would you summarize his progression since the leg fracture and foot operation? Vitti: The (Summer League) minute limit was absolutely by design. The first goal was just to play in Summer League, whether that’s one minute or 20 minutes. The second goal is to be unrestricted by (the start of) training camp. The third goal is to be unrestricted by the (start of the) regular season. We reached the first goal. We didn’t want to do anything to jeopardize the first goal, which was to play. The second goal, how do we get there? It’s like a GPS system. You have to have two things in order for it to work. The GPS works only if you know where you are and you know where you’re going. We know where we are and we know where we’re going. We’re going to continually load that bone over the next few weeks. The more we load, the stronger it becomes. Then we’re going to de-load for a week, and then we’re going to start progressively loading it again. We put it down on paper, so management and our doctors know. We have a week-by-week plan, and our second goal is to have him be able to do everything the first day of training camp. Now, we will not sacrifice to meet that goal. So if we’re loading and he becomes symptomatic or feels pain … that’ll give us basically one year of healing from the surgery, and that should be it. MT: How do you go about convincing Randle to trust the process? I know he wasn’t pleased with the restrictions during Summer League, as he repeatedly expressed his “frustration.” Vitti: He was really pissed and frustrated, so he called me. I texted, ‘Julius, just saw you called. If you want to chat, great. If you want to play tomorrow (in the back-to-back) or you want more minutes, have a nice day off. Use it to recover. Keep it in perspective. It’s your first game back, and it’s a Summer League game. The NBA is a marathon, not a sprint. I love you for wanting to do more. Some day you’ll love me for wanting you to do less.’ That’s what I sent to him, and he didn’t respond. So then he played in the third game, and he was pissed. Then I hit him again and said, ‘Look, I know you’re frustrated with the minute restriction and how hard it is to get in a rhythm. Don’t focus on it too much. Don’t force it. Slow down. Let the game come to you. Once it does, then you can turn up the speed under control. You’ll be fine, and one day this will be a distant memory. Trust me on this.’ Then he responded, “Got you, G. Thanks.’ Then he played another game and did pretty well. I said, ‘Much better. Proud of you.’ And then after the last game, you could see he was pissed. I said, ‘Every journey begins with the first step. Congratulations, you just took it. Next goal: training camp.’ So that’s how you tell him. This is just some of the interview. It goes into much more detail. Fascinating read. I'd recommend reading the whole thing; I also included some parts that I thought were interesting. http://www.nba.com/lakers/news/150804_vittiqa?cid=tw
Excellent read, thanks for posting! I always forget that despite Vitti's lack of credentials, he's actually incredibly well versed in up-to-date medical procedures, nutrition, exercises, etc. He'll surely be missed. I'll be more comfortable with a Head AT that has more by way of credentials, but Vitti has certainly given his all to this franchise. End of an era, albeit the right ending.
Great Read for sure. I've read many of Vitti's interview in the past with Mike Trudell but it seemed like in this one he went into more depth and detail. Great stuff for sure and he will be missed Reading about our new practice facility it sounds like its going to be something the league has never seen before. TOP NOTCH!
Fantastic read. And people thought we weren't monitoring our players. Lakers don't talk. The Rockets talk. 16 > 2
How bout dat fancy damn camera stuck up in the drop ceiling of Staples so they see all dat acceleratin' and decceleratin' and how many miles dese guys are runnin' and changin' dyrections every game!! Sounds purty invasion to me..... maybe dat's why free agents don't want no part of comin' to L.A. and being spied on every game, Yo?
Also thought it was cool that the new facility is going to cater to the public. Good that they're involving the fans...I know I'd jump on an opportunity to visit.
