The Los Angeles Lakers are about to begin their quest for back-to-back NBA championships tonight, and there have been plenty of questions as to how the team will conserve LeBron James, given his age and the short offseason.
Head coach Frank Vogel addressed this issue with the media and gave an outline of how he’ll use the four-time MVP to begin the season.
Frank Vogel on how he'll use LeBron James during the first few weeks of the season: pic.twitter.com/9e4zu3HaxC
— Ryan Ward (@RyanWardLA) December 23, 2020
“We want to just back down his minutes as much as possible,” said Vogel. “The risk of peeling back his minutes too much is, talking to our medical team, you want to just keep him in rhythm as much as possible. If he’s out there for long stretches, that’s when it becomes riskier, or if he’s on the bench for too long of a stretch and has to come back in cold, that’s one of the risky situations. So we have a rotation built in for him where he plays more short bursts, gets shorter rest, and it stays with him because it what his body’s used to.”
James will turn 36 years old later this month, and he could possibly have more mileage on him than any player of his age in NBA history due to 10 trips to the NBA Finals.
Coming off the shortest offseason in NBA history, James will likely need some sort of load management in order to preserve his body, whether it means he takes some games off, or the team simply reduces his minutes.
With another MVP-caliber player in Anthony Davis by James’ side, as well as new additions Dennis Schroder and Montrezl Harrell, the Lakers should still have plenty of firepower to at least compete well when James is resting.
