some guys have had phenomenally healthy careers Karl Malone: Wilt: Robert Parish: Charles Barkley: (he missed a few games but not a big chunk of a season) Cliff Robinson: Randy Smith: look at Elvin Hayes: Kareem: Buck Williams: Gary Payton: and of course, the NBA's first 15 year virgin, AC Green:
38 minutes for CJ 36 minutes for Hassan 38 minutes for Ariza 34 minutes for Melo What's the point of this?
So you play them and you take your lumps. Is it really worth it to put Hassan/CJ/Ariza at risk of injury like this?
36-38 minutes isn't that big of a deal during a playoff push. That's either a quarter off or close to a quarter. And why are you citing Anthony's minutes? Does he have a promising future that's being put at risk? He barely belongs in the NBA anymore--the negligent thing is that they think he's worth that many minutes, not that he's being run into the ground.
This is the real question. Stotts has been on the radio multiple times saying that there are multiple ways to reduce the load for players and a lot of it happens outside of playing time. I seriously doubt Dame and CJ are getting the practice hours this year as they were in their earlier years. The guy with the longest contracts (Olshey/Dame/CJ) are the ones who have the power to reduce their minutes.
If we were talking about something actually dangerous, I'd agree. The extremity was part of the joke when talking about a professional basketball player playing a pretty normal 34 minutes in a game.