Cavs: LeBron James and Kyrie Irving’s Minutes to be Reduced?
By Reece Helms
If it weren’t for the injuries to Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love during the NBA Playoffs, we might be talking about the 50-year championship drought ending in Cleveland.
But that is not the case. Injuries plagued the 2014-2015 Cleveland Cavaliers, but they will get another chance this season to bring home a title.
You cannot avoid injuries, they are something every athlete has to overcome throughout their career. With that being the case, is there anything the Cavaliers can do to help prevent them?
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Reports came out that the Cleveland Cavaliers will consider cutting LeBron James and Kyrie Irving’s minutes. Which is the right decision if you ask me.
In the NBA Finals, LeBron James single-handedly carried Cleveland when Kyrie Irving suffered his knee injury in Game 1. James was forced to do a bulk of the scoring, and almost averaged a triple-double in the series. You could make an argument he deserved to win NBA Finals MVP although his team lost.
While LeBron James dominated the series, he also rarely even came out of the game. Out of the 298 game minutes in the finals, LeBron played 273 of those minutes. If you can’t do math, he only sat out of the game for 25 minutes.
In Game 2 of the NBA Finals, James played 50 out of the total 53 minutes. In Game 3 he played 46, and in Game 6 he played 47 minutes. That is just an insane amount of playing time for one player.
After Game 3, it was apparent that the Cavaliers had ran out of gas. The Matthew Dellavedova magic ran out, and they had a hard time scoring when LeBron was on the bench. For the Cleveland Cavaliers’ sake, hopefully they aren’t put in that position again.
Here’s a LeBron James highlight reel from the NBA Finals, although the Cavs came up short, LeBron still had a legendary series:
LeBron James should never have to play those type of minutes again on the consistent basis. It’s important that David Blatt keeps his star players fresh for the playoffs. Because at the end of the day, that’s all that matters to this Cavalier team. It is championship or bust.
In his twelve year NBA career, James has played a total of 43,330 minutes, including the playoffs. The time has come to give him some more rest throughout the regular season.
The same goes for Kyrie Irving. Although he hasn’t played as much minutes as LeBron, it’s well-documented that he has injury problems, and the team needs to be extra careful with him. It will be wise for head coach David Blatt to take a San Antonio Spurs type of approach. Which might mean they don’t play in back-to-back games during the regular season, and sometimes sit out of the game against weaker opponents.
As I stated earlier in the article, the only thing that matters to the Cleveland Cavaliers this season is winning the NBA Finals. And having LeBron James and Kyrie Irving healthy is crucial, making the decision to reduce their minutes a wise one.
Do you agree that LeBron James and Kyrie Irving’s minutes should be reduced? Let us know what you think in the comment section below!