National Post (National Edition)
JAMES’ DURABILITY IS PLAYOFF GOLD
CLEVELAND STAR IS A MACHINE WHEN IT COMES TO MINUTES OF THE FLOOR
Iin Cleveland n just the past couple of days, members of the Toronto Raptors have called LeBron James a linebacker, a free safety, and, in the rare non-football analogy, a point guard.
One more suggested term: a machine.
In conversations about Toronto’s second-round playoff series against Cleveland, the question of whether the Raptors can knock off the defending NBA champions often gets around to a specific what-if point. As in, what if LeBron got hurt? Injuries are often a part of playoff basketball, as both these teams know. Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love have each had their season ended early in the post-season in recent years, and Kyle Lowry and DeMar DeRozan played hurt last spring, while Jonas Valanciunas missed several games with an ankle sprain. Star players get banged up in the playoffs. It happens. It does not happen to LeBron. For all of his many accomplishments — the 12 All-NBA teams, the four MVPs, the three titles — one of the most remarkable numbers on his resumé is this one: 43.8. That is the amount of minutes per game he has averaged in this year’s playoffs, highest in the NBA. This would be the 10th time in his 12 post-seasons that James has averaged more than 40 minutes per playoff game, and in the two other seasons he averaged 38.2 and 39.1. He plays a ridiculous amount of basketball, and it does not seem to affect him. If you cut him, would he in fact bleed?
What makes James’ durability in the second season all the more wild is that he has been doing it for so long, and after regular seasons in which he also plays a ton. At 32 years old, James is already 25th all-time in regular-season minutes played, just ahead of Michael Jordan, who retired (for the third and final time) at 39.
James has played almost 10,000 minutes more than Dwyane Wade, his former Miami running mate, even though Wade is three years his senior. How much time does James spend on the court? Consider that although he is 25th in career minutes, James is only 87th on the list of career regularseason games played. Even though LeBron now takes his muchpublicized and controversial rest breaks during the season, having missed eight games this year, he still led the league in minutes per game, at 37.8. Back in the playoffs again, he’s playing even more. The series opener against Toronto will be LeBron’s 204th career playoff game, tied for ninth all time, and he’s already up to fourth in career playoff minutes — again, at the relatively young age of 32.
This does not bode particularly well for the Raptors. In Cleveland’s first-round series against the Indiana Pacers, the Cavaliers had an offensive rating of 117.8 — points scored per 100 possessions — when James was on the court, and it dropped to 109.7 when he sat down. More spectacularly, the Pacers had an offensive rating of 112.3 when James was playing, and it shot up to 135.7 when he went to the bench. Granted, James sat for all of 14 minutes in that series against the Pacers, but in those brief moments Indiana could pretty much score at will.
This is why, as the NBA had one of the closest MVP battles in memory this season, with the award expected to go to Russell Westbrook or James Harden, people like Toronto coach Dwane Casey think the thing should just be given to James every year.
“He’s still the best player in our league, I think,” Casey said on Monday morning before Game 1. “To me, he’s the MVP.”
Casey said much the same thing last season, as James led the Cavs to a 4-2 series win over Toronto. In that Eastern Conference Finals, James led Cleveland in points, assists, rebounds, steals and blocks. And, duh, minutes. Last year was a perfect example of the problem with trying to stop him: his threepoint shot was a little off (33 per cent), and he compensated by shooting a stupid 82 per cent on his two-point attempts while finding other teammates for open three-point attempts. As Casey said of LeBron, if his numbers go down somewhere, he figures out a way to help his team somewhere else. Scoring, defence, whatever, all of it is hard to overcome. “It’s just his overall moxie, he brings so much to the table,” the coach said.
Which, as mentioned, is a problem for the Raptors. LeBron James isn’t the only reason that P.J. Tucker is on the Raptors, but it was clear when he was brought here that management saw him as someone who could hound the King on the perimeter. Serge Ibaka, meanwhile, gives added size in the paint, where last year James more or less did what he wanted against Toronto. This time, they hope they have the bodies to at least slow him down.
By the time this series ends, James will be third in career playoff minutes, behind two guys, Tim Duncan and Kareem AbdulJabbar, who were 39 and 41 when they retired. James will be third behind them, that is, unless he gets hurt. Which would be the biggest upset of all.