The Point Four-ward: Tick Tock… Tick Tock…

Four points (okay… one larger point split up into four numbered sections) I’m thinking about the Cleveland Cavaliers…

1.) It was not long ago — September 28, to be precise, at the team’s Media Day — that LeBron James said he “could use a couple more months off” and talked of how, while he still believed himself to be the best player in the game, he recognized that there would come a time when that would no longer be the case. “Father Time is undefeated,” the King conceded.

These admissions by James — combined with his Herculean run through last year’s playoffs that left James visibly exhausted and his own personal “minutes played” odometer that, at the ripe, tender age of 30 years old, has already surpassed the entire careers of legendary players like Magic Johnson and Larry Bird — led most to assume that getting James’ minutes down would be a top priority for Cavs head coach David Blatt entering this season.

So far this season, though, James’ minutes load has been heavier than expected and both James and Blatt are hearing about it. But, as James tends to do a time or three throughout every season, he first writes the script… and then he flips it.

2.) In the past, James has admitted that he is a difficult player to bench — not just because his performance is still consistently among the best in the league, but also because… well, he just wants to play.

So, just days into the season and amid concerns over the state of James’ back — the ailing back that had required an anti-inflamatory injection last season and received another one in the middle of the preseason that kept James on the shelf for two weeks before the season tipped off — when James was asked how many games he intended to play this season he said “82” — meaning he would not miss a single game — even though no one really believed him.

He was eventually held out of the team’s game against the Heat in Miami following a string of heavy-minute games that included playing 44 minutes in an overtime loss to Anthony Davis and the Pelicans in New Orleans. But when he came back the next game and played 40 minutes, leading a spirited second half comeback in a home win against the Portland Trailblazers, the national media debate was not about the performance put on by James and the Cavs. It was, again, about his minutes.

3.) The national harp on his minutes has clearly irritated James, who came out on Sunday to clarify something: LeBron James is not a low-minutes player.

James said:

“I look at it like if I was hurting my team by playing big minutes then take me out. Sit me down and then it should be a conversation. I’ve never in my career played high minutes and hurt my team, so I don’t see why it’s such big difference or a big deal now. It’s just something to talk about because there’s nothing else to talk to me about besides minutes.”

While most people expected James and the Cavs to play the long game this season — managing player minutes and making sure that everyone was rested and ready come playoff time — James has wanted to win ballgames. He hasn’t been content with the fact that the team would be excused if they dropped some games here and there while they waited for the return of their injured starting backcourt. He looked west, saw the Golden State Warriors winning 24 of their first 25 games, and wanted more out of his team. He wanted them to be the same kind of buzz saw that the Warriors were. More than that, he wanted his teammates to want that too and so he rode them — and himself — hard… perhaps, too hard.

4.)  James is currently averaging 36.8 minutes per game, just off his career low of 36.1 per game he played last year. James has had to play a little bit more early this season because his team wasn’t healthy. So, it’s reasonable to predict that re-inserting Iman Shumpert and, particularly, Kyrie Irving into the rotation should make the King’s job, on most nights, at least a minute or two easier.

Even a slight decrease would put him in the same ballpark as fellow 2003 draftee Chris Bosh who played 35 minutes a game last year and is still at 33 minutes a game… and that’s after he was diagnosed with a blood clot in his lungs that cut his 2014-15 season short.  Even Tim Duncan, the gold standard of career minutes management, played 34 minutes a game in his age 31 season. So, it’s not like James is being run into the ground.

Besides, so far this year, James has looked to be in superb shape. After the first week of the season, he’s been as spry as at any point last year and has shown no lingering effects of the back troubles that warranted the preseason injection or the knee problems that also nagged at him last season. LeBron James has yet to suffer a significant career-altering injury, but people are still insisting that he play less.

They’re insisting that, of course, because they want to continue to watch James play basketball for as long as possible. And it’s not just Cavs fans; every sports fan should want to see that. That’s understandable.

James, however, isn’t going to turn into Duncan. They are two individuals who play the game differently and whose bodies will respond differently to the stress playing rigorous professional basketball puts on them. At the end of the day, both men will have played the roles they wanted to play and no two careers or bodies are the same.

So, if James wants to play… who are we to say he shouldn’t?