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Quiet Times Breed Noisy Takes

The Boston Celtics have the best record in the NBA so far this season. According to some however, the team must address a serious problem. Its best player is playing too much.

No, really. It is posited that because Jayson Tatum is averaging a fraction over 37 minutes a game of playing time, the Celtics are in danger of burning out their top star and MVP candidate before the playoffs, the "real season" begin and certainly by the NBA Finals, which incidentally the observers tend to assume the Celts will make anyway.

Leave aside that Tatum's time spent on the court might have something, indeed, a good deal, to do with Boston's gaudy 43-17 record to date. The worrywarts sure do. Let's generously assume that in theory, there's a point where Tatum could be overused, where his play would begin to slip due to his workload. In reality, where might that point be?

Tatum is 24 years old. By happy coincidence, Larry Bird was that age in the 1980-1981 season, when the Celtics won the first of their three NBA titles of the 80s. In that regular season, Bird averaged 39 1/2 minutes per game. In 1983-84, when Boston was again the champ, and Bird won the first of three straight MVP awards, he was granted about an extra 80 seconds of rest a game, averaging 38 plus minutes of PT.

Was that too long ago to be relevant to today's basketball? Only to the foolish, but in the spirit of generosity, I present a more contemporary comparison. Boston's last NBA championship came in the 2007-2008 season. That was a far more veteran team than today's Celts, but in terms of playing style, Paul Pierce is probably the closest comp to Tatum.

Pierce was 30 years old that season. He averaged 36 minutes per game in the regular season. This slowed him down so much Pierce was only able to average 38 per game in the playoffs.

History lesson over. I didn't go back any further than Bird because the increasingly large section of the basketball public too young to remember back then tends not to believe the statistics of the '60s and '70s. (If you must know, John Havlicek averaged 41 minutes a game for the '74 Celtic champs at age 33 and Bill Russell, age 34, averaged 43 minutes a game for the '69 champs).

In any event, none of these numbers suggest that Tatum's being driven/driving himself into the ground by coach Joe Mazzulla or by his own desires for personal glory. He's played about how much Celtics superstars have played for the last 40 years. Tatum is indeed second in the league in minutes played per game. But he's getting all of 84 seconds on the floor per night more than LeBron James, age 38. James is 12th in average minutes per game. 

If Tatum tells us he's tired, I'll believe he is. Until then, I'll believe that his 37 minutes per game is closely related to that 43-17 record.

posted by Michael Gee @ 1:54 PM