Frank Vogel rested Luis Scola on Thursday night to free up some minutes for Lavoy Allen. Scola's DNP-CD ended an active playing streak for the veteran forward.
Frank Vogel finally has a healthy front court to work with but after appreciating the effort reserve big man Lavoy Allen gave while David West, Roy Hibbert and Ian Mahinmi missed time with injuries, the Pacers coach had to find a way to keep Allen in the mix. On Thursday, that meant giving Luis Scola the night off which ended his streak of appearing in regular-season games at 277.
"It was more about Lavoy, than Luis," Vogel said.
Scola brushed off the issue after the game which is no surprise from the pro's pro following a win. Surely he wasn't happy about ending the streak but it wasn't a surprise since the coaches and player discussed the issue on Wednesday.
"I like to play, but they got a point and they just thought it was best to give me a couple of days off, so that's fine," Scola said after the game.
For his part, Vogel is trying to keep his team grinding as they begin to run out of favorable spots in the schedule, let alone ways to shake up his team, to gain momentum.
"We don't want to be concerned about any long-term streak or anything like that," Vogel said. "We said when we got healthy, when we got five healthy bigs that I was going to find spots to get Lavoy Allen in there because he's a heck of a basketball player and he's been one of our better players the first half of the season."
Scola was told the plan was to sit him for two games which would mean missing the next game on Saturday against the Sacramento Kings, but after Allen tweaked his knee, Scola may be back in the mix depending on the status of Lavoy's knee. Allen played well alongside Ian Mahinmi and Roy Hibbert, scoring eight points with five rebounds in just nine minutes before limping out of the game.
At this time of the year, seeing a player sit out, especially a vet like Scola with plenty of playoff experience, brings the thought of a potential trade in the works. Scola said he hadn't considered that and it would be a surprise since the up-front converstations with Frank Vogel centered around giving him some rest.
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