INDIANAPOLIS _ There will come a point in the season, somewhere around the All-Star break, when the Cavs begin to pull back on LeBron James' minutes. For now, however, the throttle remains open despite James sitting out Wednesday's loss to the Indiana Pacers.
Coach Tyronn Lue said James' workload through the first 10 games had no bearing on the decision to rest him. In fact, his minutes are right where they want them. James and his trainer, Mike Mancias, developed a system during his time in Miami in which James burns high through the first half of the season before pulling back around All-Star weekend. He remains idling until April. By the playoffs, all restrictions are lifted.
"Right now he wants to be 36-38 minutes a night," Lue said. "He's right where he wants to be."
Indeed, James is playing 37 minutes a game. The Cavs have struggled to put teams away in some fourth quarters this season, forcing James and the starters back into games they otherwise should've had extra rest. For now, however, it apparently isn't a problem.
The bigger issue right now is the Cavs' pitiful 4-16 record in games James has missed since returning to Cleveland. Aside from James, they were also without J.R. Smith and Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday. Regardless, it's evident by now how reliant the Cavs are on James, likely more than any team relies on any superstar in the league. Although they have Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, and although James is trying to turn more control of the offense over to Irving this season, James remains the engine that revs the Cavs.
Love, however, is optimistic they're figuring out how to play without him. Love scored a season-high 27 points Wednesday and grabbed 16 rebounds, and Irving scored 24 points.
Although the record is unsightly, they went 1-7 when James missed two weeks his first season back to rest knee and back issues, Love believes the Cavs function much better without James now than they did then.
"I think we definitely had a better effort [Wednesday] than we've had in the past," Love said. "In Year 1 of us playing together, we didn't really know how to do that. We didn't know what that meant.
"We really didn't know how to play, and other times we didn't play hard enough. I can actually remember a time being here [Indiana] where that was the case. We just didn't play hard. I thought we just did a really good job [Wednesday] of continuing to fight back."
Of course, the only time the Cavs would be forced to play without James when there is anything at stake is if he suffered a serious injury in the postseason _ in which case, their odds of winning would be dramatically reduced. Otherwise, the Cavs are trying to create a maintenance program that ensures James is at peak performance when the playoffs begin. If that means missing _ and losing _ a few games during the regular season, so be it.
The Cavs have 14 sets of back-to-backs remaining on the schedule. It's likely James will miss at least a few of those, either on the front or back end. For now, Lue won't commit to a goal of how many games he'd like James to play this season.
"We can win games without LeBron," Lue said. "We know that. We got to prove it and show it."
