LeBron James' Minutes to Start Lakers Season an Unnecessary Risk for Darvin Ham, LAL
LeBron James was the talk of the NBA town on opening night.
No, he didn't go berserk in the box score (by his standards at least) or lead his Los Angeles Lakers past the defending champion Denver Nuggets. Instead, the focus fell on his 29 minutes, an uncharacteristically low allotment for him but one the Lakers planned to keep using in order to keep him upright and fresh as possible for his 21st season in the Association.
The strategy lasted all of one game before L.A. upped his floor time to 35 minutes in game two—including all 12 of the fourth quarter—as Lakers coach Darvin Ham concluded (maybe rightfully so) his squad couldn't survive having James on the bench. The Lakers won his minutes by 22 points in a five-point win, meaning they lost the 13 he didn't play by 17 points.
"He asked me if I could go the [whole] quarter, and I looked at the time and the score and what was going on in the game, and it was an easy answer for myself," James told reporters afterward. "I know how much work I've put in to be able to play quarters or whatever the case may be. And I understand that we definitely have a system put in place, but tonight called for me to go outside the box."
Three nights later, the Lakers again diverted from their initial plan and tasked James with 39 minutes of their overtime loss to the Sacramento Kings. He paced the starting lineup in plus/minus (minus-5) and finished second on the team in points (27), rebounds (15) and assists (eight), so Ham may have felt the Lakers had no chance without him.
Of course, that's the reason you put a plan like this in place, though. You don't want the micro focus of an October game doing anything to damage your macro goals for the postseason.
"It's easy with him to get caught up in the emotion of the game and you tend to forget you want to play these long stretches, but in order for him to be as effective as possible, we have to be mindful of the minute output and how long his stretches are," Ham explained after the opener.
If only Ham had adhered to his own words.
He did, at least, mercifully trim James' workload to 33 minutes in his fourth game, but even that raised more than a few eyebrows, since this contest was the second night of a back-to-back following that overtime affair. Not to mention, he was listed on the injury report going into that game.
So, over the course of two nights, James, who turns 39 in December, logged 72 minutes against young, competitive clubs. That playing time plan is apparently out the door already.
That can't be the case. Not if L.A. hopes to have any kind of success come May or (fingers crossed) June.
The Lakers are putting themselves at real risk of wearing James out. Since that carefully monitored opener, he's averaged 35.6 minutes over three outings. That's a number he's only eclipsed in one of his last five seasons.
His career may resemble that of a basketball-playing cyborg, but he's still human. He still has better than 54,000 regular-season minutes on his career odometer. He's still less than two months away from his 39th birthday.
He needs to have his minutes managed in some kind of way. The latest strategy, it seems, is trying to remember to keep him off the floor early, because the club clearly doesn't like it's fourth-quarter options without him.
Will the Lakers stick to this strategy, though? Would trimming a minute or two per night off his total even matter that much if he's going full-throttle for significant stretches of every fourth quarter?
The goal, remember, is simply getting him to the finish line. With 20-plus absences to show for each of the past three seasons, that isn't something that can automatically happen on its own.
His supporting cast must play better, so Ham can trust it to hold things down without James. However, Ham can't just abandon to chase regular-season wins. If the Lakers simply remain competitive, that can be good enough for a veteran team like this to still make noise in the postseason.
Last season, the Lakers had to participate in the play-in tournament just to land the seventh seed, but once they secured their playoff ticket, they pushed all the way into the Western Conference finals. So long as they keep James upright, a similar outcome could be in the cards, but they can't wear him out this early.
