NBA teams looking to balance rest, play

There are 27 games remaining on Cleveland’s regular-season schedule, and perhaps only one person over that stretch will be able to stop LeBron James.

That would be Cavs coach Tyronn Lue.

He has to protect James from himself.

Finding the right time to rest players is a conundrum that many NBA coaches have wrestled with for years, even more so now given the ways teams have been able to apply technology to the formula and use personalized data to help their medical and athletic training staffs determine when someone simply needs a break. The rest topic seems to become more prevalent as the season winds down, particularly after the All-Star break, with teams in the playoff race trying to ensure top players are healthy for the postseason.

As James nears 50,000 minutes for his NBA career — a milestone that he’ll likely reach during the upcoming playoffs — he abhors the idea of taking nights off. Yet there will almost certainly be nights over the next few weeks where James’ uniform stays on its game-night hanger, and fans who plunked down big money to see him play will have to deal with disappointment.

“Me being a competitor, me loving the game that I’ve loved every single day, I don’t always have the right assessment of me playing a lot of minutes,” James said. “That’s why I have coach Lue and the coaching staff and the training staff to be like ‘Hey, LeBron ... let’s take it easy today.’ Me, I don’t ever want to take a day off.”

Only seven players appeared in all 82 of their teams’ regular-season games in 2015-16. It is becoming more and more of a rarity; in 2005-06 there were 14 players who appeared in 82 games, in 1995-96 the number was 25.

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