This just in: The Big 3 have played a lot of minutes

Locker room big 3 2
Stop me if you've heard this before.  Kevin Garnett, Ray Allen and Paul Pierce have played a lot of minutes. 

(I heard you say stop… but if I really did, this would be a crappy post now, wouldn't it?)

This week, TrueHoop commissioned a list of the top 50 leaders in "real minutes played"… which includes regular season and playoffs.  And, of course, our boys were on the list.  KG was 18th (47,988), Ray was 24th (45,156) and Pierce was 50th (40,085).  Breaking out the ol' abacus, that works out to be 133,229 minutes combined (that's a big abacus).  

That's equivalent to more than 2775 games at 48 minutes per game.  If you use a more reasonable 35 minutes per game, that works out to be approximately 3806 combined games worth of minutes on their legs. 

Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was the far-and-away leader in minutes with 66,297… which means that as much as they've played, they won't come close to matching that level.  And as much as they've played, none of these guys has as many minutes on their legs as Kobe Bryant (48,310). 

This just hammers home the same storyline we've all been running with for years now:  you've got to find ways to limit these guys' minutes.  Last year, Ray Allen played 36.1 minutes per game.  He played 36.6 as a 26 year-old in Milwaukee.  And I know that Ray's in amazing shape… but Father Time waits for no one.  At some point, it will catch up to him.  Pierce's minutes are starting to get pared back a little and KG's minutes are being limited out of necessity.  But that doesn't change the fact that the C's need to find new ways to get through the regular season for as long as these guys are part of the team. 

You know… maybe I should have listened when you said stop earlier. 

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