LeBron James and his playing time has been possibly the biggest subject surrounding the Los Angeles Lakers this season. The Lakers came into the season planning to play their 21-year-old superstar somewhere between 28 and 30 minutes per game in an effort to load manage him without requiring him to take substantial time off. So far, things haven’t gone as planned, but in three of four games, he’s played a total of 35 minutes or less.

However, he has played a major amount of minutes in the fourth and final quarter of games. So far this season, 33% (45/136) of his playing time has occurred in the fourth quarter or overtime throughout his four games played. As a result, James may be sitting out more of the first three quarters of games in order to preserve his energy for the fourth.

As the Lakers try to find a method to keep James healthy for the regular season and the playoffs, James acknowledged that this type of playing schedule might persist for a long this season.

It has proven to be effective thus far this season. James predicted that the tendency will carry on. “Obviously, that’s winning time. Personally, I live for the opportunity to make a difference in the game’s last minutes. We’ve had success using this strategy, and it’s the quarter in which I perform best in terms of closing out games and making plays for my teammates.

I think we will all get better and know what’s going on throughout the course of the game and where we want to be and how we will finish games and things of that nature but ton once we get to like Coach Ham, once he gets to a rhythm of rotations and things of that nature, and where he wants to go in and how which was lineup to go with throughout the course of the game.

In-game load management with James is the appropriate reaction to rules put in place by the league in the offseason with relation to load management and games played criteria for awards. Not only that, it keeps James able to play as many games as possible while limiting the amount of times he could find himself needing to miss a significant stretch.

The Lakers have needed James in crunch time multiple times this season already, but the expectation is that they can put themselves in better situations to win early as they integrate. James can control his minutes in all four quarters instead of just the first three.

So far, it seems to be working as LeBron has averaged 11.0 points, 3.2 rebounds, and 1.5 assists on 78% true shooting in the fourth quarter this season.