Blowouts Matter: Celtics vs Lakers, in Early Minutes

Posted by Zach Lowe on Nov 6, 2009 40835 commentshttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F2009%2F11%2F06%2Fblowouts-matter-celtics-vs-lakers-in-early-minutes%2FBlowouts+Matter%3A+Celtics+vs+Lakers%2C+in+Early+Minutes2009-11-06+17%3A18%3A09Zach+Lowehttp%3A%2F%2Fcelticshub.com%2F%3Fp%3D4083

Kobe Bryant has played exactly as many minutes in five games (208) as Paul Pierce and Ray Allen have played in six. Andrew Bynum and Lamar Odom have played more minutes in five games (200 and 202, respectively) than KG (175) or Rajon Rondo (196) have in six.

It may not be much, and the season may be very young, but let’s translate that into a much simpler statement: A half-dozen games into the season, and Kobe Bryant has already played the equivalent of one more full game than anyone on the Celtics—or, rather, he is on pace to play an entire game’s worth of minutes more than the most heavily-worked Celtics. (Actually, the gap is “on pace” to be even higher, but you get my drift).

Obviously, Kobe’s raw number of minutes won’t continue to pull away from Pierce and Allen at this rate for long. The Lakers have already played two overtime games and Pau Gasol may return to the line-up over the weekend, shifting Lamar Odom to the bench (assuming Andrew Bynum’s injury is as minor as it appears).

But it’s not just the overtime games that are killing the Lakers starting five early. It’s the fact that the LA bench has stunk it up so far. John Hollinger at ESPN.com brings you the grim LA bench stats today, so I won’t rehash them here. Suffice it to say that Sacha Vujacic is not a very good basketball player.

So far this season:

Lakers: Starters have played 962 out of 1250 possible minutes—77 percent;

Boston: Starters have played  935 out of 1440 possible minutes—65 percent.

The point of this is not (entirely) to denigrate the Lakers bench. The point is to show that a bunch of easy wins and a top-notch bench adds up to a large amount of relative rest fairly quickly. Every little bit helps. And six games in, the C’s old legs have already picked up an extra game of rest compared to the most over-worked starting unit among the league’s elite teams.