I already did and showed how Kyrie's TS% goes down by quarter. BTW, his 4th quarter 3FG% is .299.
You're the one who stated "36 minutes has been shown as optimal". Fine, show me the data that backs up your claim.
BNM
OK, I did some googling and can't find a single reference that says anything remotely like 36 MPG is optimal playing time for a basketball player at any level. In fact, there isn't a lot of data on performance vs. playing time for basketball. There is data for other sports. The Europeans seem to be leading the world in this area of research. So, there's quite a bit of data that shows foot velocity deceasing over the course of a soccer match, etc. Most of the basketball studies are focused on risk of serious injury vs. playing time and all of those show a very dramatic increase in the frequency and severity of injuries as playing time (and fatigue) increases. Most of those studies make vague references to physical performance decreasing with fatigue. There are two types of fatigue that contribute to both decreased performance and injury risk: short term fatigue (tiring as the game progresses) and long term fatigue (players who play big minutes over the course of a season - we should call this the Thibodeau effect). Both types of fatigue impact in game performance, but long term fatigue has a much greater impact on injury risk.
So, playing an extra four minutes in any specific game may only have a minor impact on performance, but playing an extra 4 minutes per game over the course of an 82-game season has a MUCH greater impact. Those extra 4 minutes per game add up and wear a player down. Which is exactly why you see so many coaches resting their starters as the season winds down. They want them fresh for the playoffs.
This is all just me summarizing several articles I found. None of them had anything like a simple graph that showed declining performance vs. playing time, but several mentioned is was a "well known fact" that performance levels decline with increased playing time. Most of these are articles in scientific or medical journals, and as mentioned, include sports other than basketball. There were a couple articles that showed how FT percentage decreases with fatigue and how the trajectory of a long jump shot also decreases with muscle fatigue. There are articles containing graphs and bar charts showing how susceptibility to serious injury increases with increased playing time.
Of course, even this varies from individual to individual. Given Kyrie Irving's injury history (which is the single biggest factor in determining likelihood of future injury), he probably shouldn't be playing 36 MPG over the course of an NBA season. He just isn't that durable. Damian Lillard on the other hand , to this point in his career, has proven to be a much more durable player. Dame averages 36.4 MPG over the course of his career and has played almost 1600 more minutes in 6 NBA seasons than Kyrie Irving has in 7 NBA season. The simple fact is Lillard is capable of playing more minutes per game and per season than Kyrie Irving.
In terms of physical performance vs. playing time, all of the references I read agree that physical performance decreases with fatigue. How rapidly it declines varies from individual to individual, depends on the particular type of physical activity, etc. But, it is universally accepted that after an initial warm up period, followed by a period of peak physical performance, physical performance declines. In some sports, such as soccer, that period of peak performance can be as short as five minutes (if a player is going all out for those 5 minutes) and requires 5 minutes of rest to return to that same level of physical performance.
The fact that physical performance is not a linear function with respect to playing time (I could not find a single study that says it is), makes "stats" like per-36 numbers in basketball highly unreliable. Such linear interpolations assume that each and every player will perform identically at minute 1 as they do at minute 10 as they at minute 36, and that's simply not true - for any athlete. Throw in the impact of long term fatigue of playing an extra four minutes per game, and there is really no basis to say any player will perform at the same level playing 36 MPG as they do playing 32 MPG.
And while there may not be a specific study with a nice graph or chart that shows declining performance vs. increased playing time, every coach alive knows this. Otherwise, they would never rest their players except in a blow out. They wouldn't sit them in the first, second, or third quarters until the game was well in hand.
Currently, of 450 players in the NBA, only 12 are averaging =>36 MPG (for comparison 51 are averaging => 32 MPG), and that number is high compared to recent years. Usually, those numbers come down late in the season, especially as teams lock in their playoff seeding, teams out of the playoff picture rest their veterans in favor of developing their younger players, etc. That may not be the case this year, with such tight playoff races in both conference. In recent years, the number of players that averaged 36 MPG has been:
2014-15 - 6 players averaged => 36 MPG
2015-16 - 7 players averaged => 36 MPG
2016-17 - 8 players averaged => 36 MPG
2017-18 - 12 players averaging (so far) => 36 MPG
A player capable of playing that many minutes over the course of an NBA season is pretty rare. Assuming every player is capable of performing at their peak level while averaging 36 MPG is a fallacy. If there was any validity to the notion that optimal performance peaked at 36, you'd see a lot more players averaging 36 MPG.
BNM
