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.
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
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.
The major difference is Lebron still plays defense with that many minutes. History has already proven that 38mpg for Harden results in fatigue and lackluster defense. Up till now, even with the Clippers game, where Harden was benched, he's averaging 38mpg. Look at our opponents, Dallas, Portland, New Orleans, Utah. Those aren't even the top tier teams. What's going to happen with the top tier teams? 40mpg? If we had no one else to go to in the game, I would say otherwise, but we have Howard now. With Harden, Howard and at least 1 or 2 role players who get into a rhythm a game, we have a lot of cushion room for Harden to sit compared to last year. If we really want to be a title contender or even conference title contender, we need to ration out minutes long term. Just saying, "suck it up" doesn't work as demonstrated by last season.
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?
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.
We were 29th in the league for scoring defense last year, so let's not pretend we didn't have a problem. Harden was noticably lackluster on defense throughout the season and not just during injuries. I'm not saying 38 minutes isn't long for a "super star". However, we have the evidence of last season that 38 minutes is too long for James Harden. If we only had James Harden on the team, we can keep him on the court for that long. However, now that we have Howard, why not reduce Hardens minutes and let Howard run the offense for a while?
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.
