Originally Posted by
Jumbo
Please demonstrate that playing 37 minutes instead of 32, or whatever, makes any difference whatsoever in performance. Please.
Meanwhile, here are some numbers for you:
Jon Scheyer with 30-plus minutes this season: 16.8 ppg, 3.6 rpg, 2.4 apg, 1.6 spg, .451 FG%, .852 FT%, .436 3PT%
Jon Scheyer with less than 30 minutes this season: 10.4 ppg, 3.7 rpg, 3.1 apg, 1.9 spg, .407 FG%, .786 FT%, .292 3pt%
Doesn't look like big minutes are hurting him at all. In fact, they seem to help. If you go back and look, this is a trend through his career.
Kyle Singler with 30-plus minutes this season: 17.2 ppg, 8.4 rpg, 3.4 apg, 1.1 spg, 0.9 bpg, .450 FG%, .630 FT%, .340 3pt%
Kyle Singler with less than 30 minutes this season: 16.4 ppg, 7.3 rpg, 3.0 apg, 2.9 spg, 0.7 bpg, .521 FG%, .780 FT%, .333 3pt%
Kyle's numbers look better in the low-minute games. Then again, we have to consider that those games came against weak opponents.
Gerald Henderson with 30-plus minutes this season: 19.5 ppg, 5.5 rpg, 2.3 apg, 1.8 spg, .549 FG%, .778 FT%, .727 3PT%
Gerald Henderson with less than 39 minutes this season: 11.4 ppg, 4.3 rpg, 1.7 apg, 1.1 spg, 1.2 bpg, .448 FG%, .821 FT%, .333 3PT%
Gerald's sample size is really small, but he's certainly not suffering.
From those numbers, we can conclude with a fairly high degree of certainty that logging heavy has not impacted performance in individual games. Maybe Kyle's shooting has suffered. Maybe. Then again, you'd expect everyone's shooting to suffer because presumably, guys are playing big minutes against better teams, who should be stronger defensively, etc.
Now, maybe your point is that playing those many minutes over the course of a season will lead to tired legs in March. We've argued that to death over the last few years. Someone will point to Singler's struggles down the stretch last year. I'll post Battier's 30-plus-minute stats in response. Someone will claim that J.J. wore down. I'll mention that Shelden played just as many minutes and, over the last two months of his senior season, averaged 20 ppg, 11.8 rpg. 4.0 bpg and shot .556 from the field and .730 from the line.
Then we'll have the same debate about how practices are far more tiring than games, and playing an extra 10 minutes of game time each week should not build up to some sort of critical fatigue level. And then we'll have the same argument three days later. Woohoo!