What LeBron James can learn from Kobe Bryant
— -- In the final scene of the movie "Whiplash," Miles Teller's character performs a masterpiece drum solo on stage in front of his crazed tyrant of a music instructor played by J.K. Simmons. The hyper-focused Teller sits in a pool of sweat as he unleashes a percussion tornado in front of Simmons, who nods approvingly at Teller -- the first time Simmons has done so in their countless hours of abusive tutelage.
With blood splattering onto the cymbals from blistered fingers, Teller looks up at the stunned Simmons and proudly nails the flourishing end of the solo. At that last slam of the drumstick, the movie ends. Cut to black.
In February, Kobe Bryant was asked by GQ's Chuck Klosterman if he had seen the movie. "Of course," Bryant told Klosterman. "That's me."
The climax of the movie hammers home the overall theme: You cannot go too far in the pursuit of perfection.
As Bryant said in his famous Kobe System commercial, "Where do you go from the top? You go over the top."
This fits Bryant's legacy. In a statement on Sunday night, NBA commissioner Adam Silver cited "a relentless work ethic" among Bryant's career achievements alongside his Olympic medals and championships. Silver added, "whether competing in the Finals or hoisting up jump shots after midnight in an empty gym, Kobe has an unconditional love for the game."
But here's the thing: Bryant's greatest strength -- that relentless work ethic -- proved to be his ultimate downfall. Bryant put his body through the grinder, espousing a "no days off" mentality.
One unfortunate result of the "Whiplash" work ethic for Bryant: After his age-33 season, he never played another playoff game.
After he pushed it to the limit, Bryant broke down faster than every great before him.
The breaking point
Then, the dreaded back-to-back. On the first night, he played 41 minutes against New Orleans and then flew overnight from L.A. to Portland to play again. Bryant scored 47 points -- the most by an opponent in Rose Garden history. He played all 48 minutes as the Portland crowd chanted "M-V-P!" throughout the game. He seemed superhuman.
Bryant paid the career-threatening price two days later. On Apr. 13, he snapped his Achilles in his 45th minute of the game against the Golden State Warriors. With the Lakers, Bryant miraculously limped to the charity stripe and hit both free throws to tie the game at 109. The Lakers would win the game by two, giving them a one-game lead in the playoff race.
If this were "Whiplash," the cut to black would have happened right then and there, with Bryant's Achilles rolled up in his ankle and the sound of the net's swish echoing as he walked off the court. Come to think of it, a Hollywood studio probably would have rejected such a screenplay for being blatantly unrealistic.
Beyond the breaking point
Of course, Bryant refused to call it a wrap. He rushed back to the floor, beating timetables that said his recovery would take up to 12 months of intense rehabilitation. After just eight months, Bryant created his own theatre, announcing his return on Dec. 6 in a viral Facebook video named "Seasons of Legend."
With his jersey fluttering in the wind against a changing sky backdrop and an orchestra's brass blaring in the background for two straight minutes, the video ended with the tagline "THE LEGEND CONTINUES...DECEMBER 8." One might mistake it for a Game of Thrones preview instead of an NBA promo.
The legend continued, but not in the way the Lakers or Bryant planned. Since that video was published, Bryant has shot 36 percent from the floor across an injury-riddled 56 games. The Lakers have gone 41-122 (.251) overall during that span. Only the Philadelphia 76ers have been worse. This tilts toward Greek tragedy, not a redemption story.
During that fateful April 2013 stretch, Bryant played at least 41 minutes in seven straight games. Since then, only one player has matched that streak, Ray McCallum, who did it in 2014 for the Sacramento Kings.
McCallum was a 22-year-old rookie. Bryant was a 34-year-old with more than 54,031 career minutes to his name.
King James, meet Father Time
James is quickly approaching the 50,000-minute mark on the odometer. If you tally up his regular-season and postseason mileage, you'll find that he has played 43,987 minutes in his NBA career. He has yet to celebrate his 31st birthday.
James has already surpassed Steve Nash, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird in career minutes played. At this rate, he'll add Charles Barkley's name to that list by Christmas.
No one has piled up as many miles as James at this age. Magic Johnson set the record for most minutes through age-30 season with about 36,000. Bryant topped that by about 5,000 minutes. James topped Bryant by nearly 2,000 minutes.
James understands that the NBA career is a marathon, not a sprint. By all accounts, James has taken extraordinary efforts to take care of his body. His personal trainer, Mike Mancias, sits on the team bench during games. James installed a cold tub in his Akron home to make his off-day recovery sessions more efficient.
All of these measures seemed to pay off in May and June, when James led the Cavaliers to the NBA Finals and almost single-handedly carried them to the title. Sports scientists around the world gawked at his workload during the Finals.
But the clock is ticking on James and he knows it. In a fascinating Sports Illustrated profile this week by Lee Jenkins, James wondered aloud about how long he can keep it up.
"What is your prime, anyway?" James asked. "Seriously, when is it? I have no idea. Is it 27 to 30? 27 to 31? Who set the number on that?"
It's a good question, especially for someone with James' mileage.
Why LeBron shouldn't follow the Kobe System
To have a better idea of James' ticking clock and Bryant's crashed career, take a look at the following career arcs of the all-time greats.
I pulled up the top 25 players in career win shares, an all-in-one metric at Basketball Reference that compares production across eras. And then I plotted it by age in the league. Bryant's arc, as you might have guessed, is highlighted in purple.
As you can see, Bryant's career took an unlikely turn after he turned 34, thanks to that Achilles rupture and all the NBA miles he piled up while most of the others were still in college. Bryant's post-34 drop was more precipitous than that of any of his peers -- he has actually contributed a negative number of wins over the last three seasons.
That's right: Bryant's inefficiency has been so drastic post-34 that he has cost the Lakers more than he has contributed. So far it's only 1.1 negative wins, but at the rate he's going this season, he will end up at about five negative wins. Compare that to Manu Ginobili, who is older than Bryant but has paced himself more and is still contributing about five wins a season on the second-best team in the West.
It's not just Ginobili. As evidenced by all those other lines above Kobe's, the average great in this group produced 22.9 wins after turning 34. Among guards, John Stockton, Reggie Miller, Ray Allen and Gary Payton all played at a high level into their mid-30s.
In fact, every one of the top-25 players in career win shares won a playoff game after turning 34 ... except for Kobe Bryant.
James would probably like to avoid being the second player on that inauspicious list.
Year 13 is prime, but then time gets even
One way to avoid that list is for LeBron to extend his prime years. So, that takes us back to his question above: "What is your prime, anyway?"
If you look at the list of greats above, the age of peak performance is 27 years old. Most players enjoyed a sustained run for about six years from 24 to 30 where their average win shares stood above the 12-win rate, or within 20 percent of the peak.
But James shouldn't measure prime years only by age, because, like Bryant, he came into the league out of high school. Instead, seasons played may be more meaningful. And here's where it becomes interesting. A look at how the greats aged by season shows us that the 13th season tends to be the end of peak performance before production falls off by about a third.
James is currently in his 13th season.
Can James pace himself?
There might be a preps-to-pros effect, but it's hard to tease that out in this sample of all-time greats. The track record of Dwight Howard, Andrew Bynum, Tracy McGrady, Josh Smith and Jermaine O'Neal certainly isn't reassuring for James.
But it is worth pointing out that Kevin Garnett has enjoyed a soft landing in his late-30s, slowly tapering off rather than seeing Bryant's sharp decline.
Garnett took a vastly different approach from Bryant. The last time KG played 40-plus minutes in consecutive games was in 2007 when Ricky Davis was his wing man. Garnett was 30 years old.
When Garnett went to Boston later that year, Celtics coach Doc Rivers managed his minutes to 32.8 per game in 2007-08, down from 39.4 in his final season in Minnesota. Garnett, who had lingering knee concerns starting in 2009, never averaged more than 32.8 in any season thereafter.
While Garnett sliced his minutes as he entered his 30s, James is averaging 36.5 minutes per game, up slightly from last season. And he seems to be taking Bryant's "no days off" mentality. When asked whether he set any goals for playing time this season, he said one number: 82. As in, he wanted to play every game this season, despite back issues that have bothered him for years.
Indeed, James has played in every game this season, including three back-to-back sets. In mid-November, James played 39 minutes in New York and 45 minutes the next night in Milwaukee (a loss), then 40 minutes the following game in Detroit (another loss).
"If I'm able to link up with [Gregg Popovich] in the afterlife, we can sit down and drink some wine and I can ask him how to pace," James told SI. "I haven't figured that out yet."
Tim Duncan, Father Timeless
James' claim isn't entirely true in light of his surprising decision last season to take a two-week sabbatical to rest starting in late December. He may say that he doesn't know how to pace, but that break clearly demonstrates he knows the value of recovery.
Still, he's right to look to Popovich for a better way to play -- or play less. The Spurs coach has made an art form of minute management, and that is best seen in the career of Tim Duncan, who came into the league one year later than Bryant after four years in college.
Outside of a once-in-eight-lifetimes fluke last season in which Duncan played back-to-back triple-overtime games, Duncan stopped playing consecutive 40-minute games in 2008 when he was 32. Later that season Duncan dealt with knee tendinosis and never averaged more than 31.3 minutes after his 33rd birthday. Since then, Duncan has appeared in 71 playoff games, won an NBA title and continued to lead the Spurs to one 55-win season after another. Duncan now leads the NBA in defensive Real Plus-Minus even though he's five months shy of his 40th birthday.
But if he hopes to cut back the load, James finds himself in a tough spot. On one hand, he understands the need to recover, as his off-day regimen is filled with cold tubs and cryotherapy sessions. But on the other, James has to carry the load without starters Kyrie Irving and Iman Shumpert, both recovering from major surgery. James has also been without starter Timofey Mozgov for several games.
As a result, James is playing the sixth-most minutes in the NBA. The five names ahead of him are all younger than 27, and none have played in the Finals. James has played in five straight.
Playing through the pain and ramping up the minutes sounds like a heroic thing to do. But as Garnett and Duncan can attest, the other route can bring glory well into the 30s. If James wants to extend his championship window, he should follow their path, slice his minutes and be wary of back-to-backs.
The "Whiplash" way
If Bryant's demise wasn't already a lesson for James, the Cavs star should rewind to last June.
Five months ago, James watched Irving play 44 minutes on a bad knee in Game 1 of the NBA Finals, the same knee that caused him to miss half the Eastern Conference finals. Irving had been surprisingly cleared to play in Game 1. And so he played. Hey, it's the Finals. You fight through the pain, right?
On a drive against Klay Thompson in overtime of Game 1, Irving landed awkwardly. X-rays would later show he had fractured his knee cap.
Another word about that.
One month earlier, Irving began a playoff pregame ritual by writing one word on his shoes:
