James Harden is playing too many minutes

I respectfully disagree. Playing a lot of minutes as a big man takes more of a toll IMO. A LOT more physical down on the block.

Plus, Harden doesn't take bad falls when he gets fouled. I think he will be fine this year. 38 minutes a game is a good number, but hopefully it'll be closer to 36, due to blowouts and such (in our favor of course!) lol.

 

The thing is we have the depth to be able to play Harden less minutes (32?) completely fresh, because we have Beverly, Garcia, and Lin.

 

He had to make up for being benched against the clippers

 

He saved his energy in the Clippers game

 

WE CAN LIMIT HARDEN MINUTE'S BY GETTING US AN EARLY BIG LEAD!... BUT WE CAN'T DO IT WITH THE STARTLING SLOW EVERY GAME CUZ OF TWIN TOWERS!.. THATS WHY HARDEN IS ALWAYS FORCE TO PLAY HEAVY MINUTES...SO I SUGGEST ENOUGH WITH THE TWIN TOWER AND SMALL BALL IN EVERY GAME AND GET US A BIG LEAD EVERY GAME SO WE CAN REST OUR STARTERS

 

He played way too many minutes even he had 8 turnovers and 5 personal fouls at that time.

 

LeBron played like 43 mpg in Cleveland. Iverson played like 43 mpg in Philly. THOSE can be argued as too many minutes.

Damn near every star player plays around 38 mpg or more when they are Harden's age.

 

he won't have to play as many minutes if they just started games well and blew some teams out

 

Agreed. That being said I hope Mchale keeps Harden to sub 35mins against the lakeshow.

 

38 minutes is fine just as long he does not play 40 minutes or more per game.

 

32? He's not Tim Duncan. I think 36-38 should be the goal.

 

I disagree with. I think he should play more minutes so he can prove he can do it all.

 

What do you mean as demonstrated by last season? Last year we overachieved on the strength of what Harden did. So him playing 38 mpg last year worked fine. Only time it became an issue was after his foot/knee injury(which he played through, taking only two games off, since our playoff seeding was in jeopardy). It should only be better this year since he worked on his conditioning this summer.

38 minutes per game is not a long time...it's the normal amount of time for a star player of his age.

Distributed equally, it works out to be 9:30 minutes per quarter. Meaning he'll play for 9:30 minutes than sit for 5 minutes and play the last stretch of the second quarter. How is that so appalling to people?

 

to every Iversons and Lebrons there are Grant hills and Penny Hardaways...

 

Chandler needs to hit the 3 pointer consistently. If he can do that, Garcia can move to the 2 spot to give Harden some rest.

 

AAAAAAAAAHHHH! MY EYES!!!

 

His usage rate is down slightly from last year, hopefully as Beverley mends his minutes go down.

 

Why are you saying that as if we were 29th in the league because of Harden? We were top 10 WITH Harden on the court when Asik was on there as well. The crux of the problem last year resided on the fact we didn't have a suitable backup for Asik. Harden was only a part of the issue, not the only nor the biggest part.

38 minutes pushed him to his brink last year as it was his first year. He was thrust into it with no time at all to prepare for that kind of role. That being said our team did better than expected and he did well and established himself as a top 5 player in the league according to espn, slam, etc. I'd say he did fine playing 38 minutes per game...this year gave him more time to prepare for the role with the added benefit of Dwight making it easier for him, which means 38 minutes should go even smoother this year.