Well his rest didn't help his free throw shooting!

I'm not a coach but I like to see coach keep players in the game. Just let the guy play pulling him/her out can disrupt their flow so even if he comes back in he/she probably be cold anyway.

What if you have a similar player on the bench? Straight swap isn't it? Weigh up what you might gain or lose and make the decision.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing,and in this case make the coach look a bit silly, but what if Turkoglu picked up his 5th in the 2nd quarter? there'd be calls for coaches head!

Agree with LA Boy, sometimes you just have to play them, particularly if momentum is on your side.

Keep him on, but possibly make a switch on defence to ensure he is guarding someone who isn't that aggresive/looking to score

gen x, he had four fouls almost five minutes into the third quarter, rather than the second. Assuming he can afford 1.5 fouls a quarter, he was roughly on pace.

Ah crap, I thought it was in the 2nd... my bad! (I've just gotten outa bed after a work show..)

on a slightly different topic that still surrounds Coach Van Gundy. There's been a lot of talk about how he made bad decisions on benching Alston.

although he probably played Nelson too much but in reality this could really have gone either way. imgagine if Nelson made some play near the end that resulted in a Magic win, everybody'd go "great decision by Van Gundy and having the confidence keeping Nelson in" etc.

so personally I think people shouldn't be too harsh on him for his decision...that's my opinion anyway.

If you're Al Westover, and Chris Anstey pickes up his fourth foul in the first half of a match at the Cage, you keep playing him because you know that he is never going to pick up his fifth and sixth fouls.

I would save him for crunch time. It appears that teams seem to pick up the pace a bit towards the end when the result of the game is more determined. Not only that but if they have slacked off a bit in the early stages of the game, they tend to want to do a lot more to make up for it towards the end. That's when you need to have those players available.

I know that Westover and Goorj have generally kept their star players in even when they've picked up 4 fouls in the first half.

In the case of Anstey it rarely comes back to bit them, but I can remember Jason Smith fouling out pretty early a few times against the 6ers back in Goorj's Sydney days.

I guess its really just the coach's decision. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

Depends what position they play IMO. A guard on 4 fouls will find it a lot easier to keep out of trouble than a big man defending Dwight Howard who will stroll right past you for the dunk if you're not 100% committed. Turkoglu's not inside banging bodies on D so in his case I think you're better leaving him on.

All i know is the Orlando coach got strung by his nuts for losing that game & all Howard had to do was hit one foul shot to give them a 4 pt lead with 10 secs left. If Howard hits the free throw, all the second guessing of his coaching goes away.

Turkoglew was awesome down the stretch & almost won them the game. He's a great player. All the mistakes came after they should have iced the game from the foul line.

Did Van Gundy have done anything differently? No way man - very unlucky!!