Oh great a "Back in my day, we walked 15 miles in the snow to school!" argument. The NBA has thankfully become quite a long ways since then.
-Not Joerger's fault that Vlade made that trade. He shouldn't have to risk his star's health to make up for that horrific GM decision.
-Why do you care about beating Skal Labs and Gary Trent Jr.? This game would have proven exactly nothing if Fox played 30 minutes or the 15 minutes that he did play. It'd have no impact on the future of this team in the slightest. What Joerger DID do was ensure that most of our main core gets to head into the offseason with a clean bill of health. He probably played Bagley and Bogdan too long as it is.
I don't think you get to draw the line that way. The bigger picture is the overall record for the season - symbolic but nonetheless something important to the fans and something the players could hang their hats on. It evens out over the season - at the end of the day 40 wins is 40 wins. Nobody goes and looks at a teams record and says ah yes but 3 came against a team without player XYZ.
By the logic of your injury argument the starters shouldn't even have played this game at all. Why draw the line at halftime?