LBJ should take a more balanced approach to the regular season.
On the cusp of his 38th birthday tomorrow, 18-time Los Angeles Lakers All-Star forward LeBron James needs to take a more balanced approach to the regular season.
Though he has seemingly taken a big step in sitting out at least one night of the team’s back-to-back sets some of the time, the 6’9″ combo forward has yet to consistently commit to that kind of career-extending game plan, having just suited up for both of LA’s back-to-back Florida bouts on Tuesday (an eventual win against the Magic) and Wednesday (a loss against the Heat so depressing to James that he essentially threatened to demand a trade in his postgame remarks).
It’s also far past time for The Chosen One to reduce his minutes average as well. James is still playing far too many minutes as he closes in on fellow Laker legend Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time regular season scoring record.
James is averaging 35.7 minutes a night, having missed eight games for Los Angeles already due to various maladies. He has been sidelined for an average of 21 contests a season since inking a maximum deal to join the Lakers as a free agent in the summer of 2018.
That’s just far too many minutes for a player with his advanced mileage.
The San Antonio Spurs were of course long the gold standard for helping their best players age gracefully. Specifically, the way the team eased a still-All-Star caliber Tim Duncan into his NBA “golden years” feels like the minutes management model most worth emulating.
Spurs Head coach Gregg Popovich began rolling back the 6’11” Hall of Famer’s average minutes per night in the 2009-10 NBA season, when Pop reduced Duncan’s burden from 33.7 minutes a night to 31.3. Duncan was available for 78 regular season contests that year, in yet another All-Star run.
Duncan’s output was rolled back even further in 2010-11, when he averaged 28.4 minutes a night but remained, once again, an All-Star level contributor to a balanced 61-win Spurs team (that got ousted in a first-round upset by Zach Randolph and the Memphis Grizzlies, but still). Only once in the ensuing seasons did the five-time champ’s minutes load get above 30 per bout, in 2012-13 (30.1 minutes).
