"The mindset changes when you tell players that winning doesn't matter"

Firstly, they weren't told winning doesn't matter.

Secondly, I read 2 or 3 books per month on psychology and coaching and I've done so for well over 12-years and have never read anything that posits a claim that resting athletes incurs a negative result.

I've read stuff to the contrary mind you.

You're offering an opinion and positioning it as though it were a fact without any inside information, without knowing anything of what McVay said to the players and without knowing anything about how the players who were given time off were feeling.

You have literally zero to go on other than the fact they lost. Seriously, zero.

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There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.