Larry Bird hears the question and laughs. ”How many times have I told you?” he asks. ”I can play all day. DJ can play all day. Minutes don`t mean nothing.”
Easy for you to say, Larry. Don Nelson still can`t believe what he saw on Sunday afternoon`s stat sheet. The numbers jumped out at him under the minutes column: Bird 56, McHale 56, Johnson 54, Ainge 51. ”It`s just amazing to me,” Nelson said, shaking his head, ”that they can play that caliber of ball with those kind of minutes. I can`t figure it out.”
The longer the season goes, the more the subject of playing time occupies newspaper and air space. Nelson isn`t the only one who wonders how the Celtics do it. People just aren`t used to seeing modern players earn their paychecks the way the Celtics do.
Bird thinks the topic is hilarious. ”When there`s a CBS game,” he says, ”it`s a joke. K.C. kept asking me if I wanted to come out, and I`m sitting in the huddle for a minute and a half while he`s asking. There are so many extra timeouts.”
The Iron Man Idea developed very quickly this year, simply because when the 1986-87 season began, not only wasn`t there either a Bill Walton or a Scott Wedman, there wasn`t even a Danny Ainge. He missed the first eight games of the season with a bad back. K.C. Jones had two choices: play some subs in a developmental capacity, or tell his All-Stars to play some big-time minutes. Are you kidding? In the obsessed world of the Boston Celtics, where nary a battle is sacrificed to win the war, that`s like no choice at all.
And so McHale went the full 48 minutes Nov. 11 in The Meadowlands (a 114-110 loss), Bird went the distance Nov. 14 in Chicago (a 110-98 win) and Johnson went the route Nov. 15 in the Pontiac Silverdome (a 118-111 win). Turns out it was good training for the playoffs, as four of the five starters currently are logging more than 40 minutes a game and the fifth (Robert Parish) is punching his time clock to the tune of 37.8 minutes a game.
During the season, Bird led the league in minutes played per game with 40.6, while McHale was fourth at 39.7, Parish tied for 11th at 37.4 and Johnson tied for 15th at 37.1 The only other team with three men over 36 minutes a game was Seattle (Dale Ellis, Xavier McDaniel and Tom Chambers).
But it`s all a product of who you are. If you`re Frank Layden, who played only one man (Karl Malone) in excess of 32 minutes, you run the squad one way. Jones was dealt a different hand. He asked a lot less of the team between games.
”Practices this year were more geared to the mental aspect than the physical,” says trainer Ray Melchiorre.
And the offense was changed to reflect the reality of longer playing time for the heavy lifters. ”This year,” says assistant coach Jimmy Rodgers,
”the ratio of set offense to fast-break offense is probably about 75-25. Last year it was more like 50-50. It`s directly related to the injury factor and the amount of minutes our starters have to play.”
To play that many minutes and have enough energy available to play the game properly at both ends in what people refer to as ”crunch time,” a team must be very, very smart. ”They seem to be able to walk the ball better than most teams can run,” marvels Nelson.
”They know how to run in straight lines,” says Detroit coach Chuck Daly.
Bird acknowledges that the team made a rational decision to forego running on many occasions. ”We adjust our game,” Bird says. ”In this series we`ve got to use our height. There`s no sense in us pushing the ball up fast so we can shoot a hurried shot under pressure when we can wait for Kevin or Robert to set up in the post.”
Basically, it all comes down to two big factors. The first is that the Celtics have bred themselves, in a sense, to big minutes.
The second factor is that, being veterans, they don`t waste energy. The only frenetic player is Ainge, and he`s also the youngest and most athletic of the five.
”Take DJ,” Bird says. ”When he plays tough defense, he does it from 15 feet on in. There`s no use picking up a guy full court if you`re going to be playing 40 minutes.”
”These guys are energy efficient,” Rodgers says.
Agrees McHale, ”Energy conservation comes natural to me.”
Ultimately, the truth is that the players not only like to play as much as possible, but they also feel it`s right to. Bird often has said that he gets paid to play 48.
”You do what you have to do,” Johnson says. ”Winning, that`s the point. You go as long as you have to go to win.”
