Which NBA players play the most minutes, and how have things changed over the years? (2024)

This is the time of the year when we transition from top-100 NBA lists and lineup projections to seeing how coaches will go about the task of breaking up minutes and using their players to begin the new regular season. Given that training camps are starting, I wanted to examine how minutes looked over the last NBA season and what observations can be made.

But first, some history.

There are 48 minutes in an NBA game and five players who can play at a time. That’s 240 minutes to account for within regulation. Minutes were first recorded for players in the 1951-52 season; in February of that campaign, the now-defunct Baltimore Bullets found a way to beat the Fort Wayne (now Detroit) Pistons, 82-77.

Those Bullets started Frank Kudelka, Kevin O’Shea, Stan Miasek, Dave Minor and Hall of Famer Don Barksdale and played no substitutes, the only verified NBA game in which only five players on a team saw action. That also was two years before the shot clock was instituted. It’s easier to play (and win!) a game when you can get a double-digit first-quarter lead and take the air out of the ball with no threat of a 24-second violation.

Read more: NBA ‘load management’ no longer supported by scientific data

A clean way to break up those 240 minutes is via a conventional eight-man rotation. A team could technically have eight players play exactly 30 minutes in a game. No team has ever done that, though 10 teams in NBA history have played exactly seven players for at least 30 minutes in a non-overtime game, including one team in a playoff game — the 2003 Dallas Mavericks in a Game 5 road loss against the Portland Trail Blazers.

Overall, 30 minutes is a round, quality number for a player to make an impact on a game. How many 30-minute-per-game players were there in the league last season, how did that compare with recent seasons and how were those players distributed across the league? Let’s take a look:

30 minutes, 30 games

I chose 30 games as a minimum to see how many players averaged at least 30 minutes per game over the course of an NBA season. The only season since 1951 in which 30 games would have been more than 50 percent of the total games played that season was the lockout-shortened, 50-game 1998-99 season, so it’s is a relatively low bar to clear for a major-minute player. (Every reference to players playing at least 30 minutes a game in this piece is with a requirement of playing at least 30 games in that season.)

Last season, 104 players who played at least 30 games averaged at least 30 minutes per contest. That included 25 of the 27 All-Star selections. The exceptions: New Orleans Pelicans forward Zion Williamson (33.0 minutes averaged per game, but only in 29 games) and Memphis Grizzlies big man and 2023 Defensive Player of the Year Jaren Jackson Jr. (28.4 minutes averaged in 63 games).

The distribution of talent varies. All 15 All-NBA selections made this list, along with seven of the 10 All-Defensive Team selections and four of the 10 All-Rookie Team selections. While most of the stars averaged 30 minutes per game, 26 of those 104 players also had a usage rate below 20 percent last season.

Team extremes

No team finished last season with more than five players who averaged better than 30 minutes per game. The four teams who had five 30-minute players last season all had different levels of success:

• The Charlotte Hornets (LaMelo Ball, Terry Rozier, Gordon Hayward, P.J. Washington and Kelly Oubre Jr.) finished 27-55, 14th in the Eastern Conference. All but Oubre return, and the Hornets will hope for better health from Ball (36 games played) and Hayward (50) to improve.
• The Toronto Raptors (Fred VanVleet, Scottie Barnes, O.G. Anunoby, Pascal Siakam and Gary Trent Jr.) finished 41-41 and lost at home in the Play-In Tournament. All but VanVleet return, though Toronto also is breaking in rookie head coach Darko Rajaković, which could lead to a different approach to minutes.
• The Cleveland Cavaliers (Darius Garland, Donovan Mitchell, Caris LeVert, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen) finished 51-31, though they lost in the Eastern Conference first round. Cleveland brings all five 30-minute players back, though the addition of small forward Max Strus could take LeVert out of a 30-minute role. Of the 104 players who averaged more than 30 minutes last season, LeVert started the fewest games (30).
• The Golden State Warriors (Stephen Curry, Klay Thompson, Andrew Wiggins, Draymond Green and Jordan Poole) finished 44-38 and won Game 7 on the road against the Sacramento Kings in the first round of the playoffs, but failed to defend their 2022 championship. All return except Poole, who was replaced by point guard Chris Paul. Like Charlotte, Golden State will hope for better availability from some – Curry played 56 games, while Wiggins played just 37.

On the other end of the spectrum, six teams finished last season with only two players who averaged at least 30 minutes per game. Five of them finished in the bottom five of their conference and missed the Play-In Tournament: the Indiana Pacers (Tyrese Haliburton and Buddy Hield), Utah Jazz (Lauri Markkanen and Jordan Clarkson), Orlando Magic (Paolo Banchero and Franz Wagner), San Antonio Spurs (Keldon Johnson and Devin Vassell) and Detroit Pistons (Jaden Ivey and Bojan Bogdanović).

The LA Clippers were the only playoff team with only two 30-minute players last season: Paul George and Kawhi Leonard. And with George and Leonard only appearing in 56 and 52 games, respectively, the Clippers were the only team in the league that did not have a 30-minute player appear in at least 60 regular-season games. Russell Westbrook averaged 30.2 minutes per game in 21 games with the Clippers, but when you add his reduced role with the Lakers, he averaged a career-low 29.1 minutes per game overall last season.

The other 20 NBA teams had exactly three or four players who finished the season averaging at least 30 minutes per game.

30-minute players in 30-team era

Fun poll. I’ll even give you the rest of daylight here!

What is the MINIMUM minutes per game a top-100 NBA player should average during the season

— Law Murray 📱 (@LawMurrayTheNU) September 27, 2023

On average, teams had 3.5 players who averaged at least 30 minutes a contest last season. The 104 players who averaged at least 30 minutes last season actually marked the first time since 2013-14 that the NBA saw 100 players clear that bar.

That 2013-14 season was the only one since 1951 in which the NBA champion had zero players average at least 30 minutes in the regular season, with Tony Parker topping out at 29.4 minutes for the Spurs. That Spurs team, however, bumped up three players to at least 30 minutes per game in the playoffs: Parker (31.3), Tim Duncan (32.7) and NBA Finals MVP Leonard (32.0).

Since the NBA grew to 30 teams for the 2004-05 season, the league has, on average, 96 players a season who average at least 30 minutes per game. That’s not quite enough to fill out a top 100, though that gets you the majority of your selections. That also comes out to 3.2 players per team. So you can say that, on average, every team has three players they’re building around. They might not be good enough to truly be a “big three,” but the heavy workload is there for about three players, and every other player in the rotation fills in from there.

It is interesting to see how the league has fluctuated with 30-minute players in the last 20 seasons. In 2008-09, the league reached an all-time peak, with 120 30-minute players. That’s an average of four players per season; there have only been six seasons since the NBA started recording player minutes in 1951 in which teams averaged at least four 30-minute players, topping out at 4.3 30-minute players per team in 1973-74.

Three seasons after that 2008-09 season came the lockout-shortened, 66-game 2011-12 campaign. That year, only 80 players averaged at least 30 minutes per game, an average of 2.7 players per team. The only other season before the 2011 lockout in which the league averaged fewer than three 30-minute players was the 1959-60 season, when there were only 23 players in an eight-team league who played at least 30 minutes per game (a 2.9 per-team average). That all-time low of 2.7 30-minute players per team in 2011-12 might have been a consequence of the lockout, but that figure was basically matched five years later in a full, 82-game 2016-17 season, a campaign that was the first of four straight seasons in which teams had fewer than three 30-minute players on average.

What happened to 40 minutes?

Here’s what the 2011 lockout did end: players averaging 40 minutes per game in the regular season.

In 2010-11, Warriors guard Monta Ellis played 80 games and averaged 40.3 minutes per game. Ellis was the only player in the league to average more than 40 minutes per game that season, and the year prior, it was only Ellis (41.4 minutes, 64 games) and Charlotte Bobcats All-Star forward Gerald Wallace (41.0 minutes, 76 games). There were only eight seasons out of 60 with no 40-minute players (1955-56, 1956-57, 1979-80, 1982-83, 1984-86, 1989-90 and 2008-09), and 1971-72 had the most players averaging 40 minutes per game with 16. The last player on a championship team to average at least 40 minutes per game in the regular season was Kobe Bryant in 2000-01. That same season, Allen Iverson was the last player to win MVP while playing at least 40 minutes per game. The last player to win NBA Finals MVP while averaging 40 minutes per game in the regular season was Shaquille O’Neal in 1999-00.

This past season marked the 12th straight season that no player who played more than four games averaged 40 minutes per contest. Teams exclusively wait until the playoffs to max players minutes past 40 now. Since the 2011-12 season, 77 players have averaged at least 40 minutes per game in the postseason, an average of 6.4 a season. The 2023 postseason saw seven players average more than 40 minutes: Leonard (two games), Mitchell (five), Jalen Brunson, Devin Booker, Kevin Durant (11 games) and Jayson Tatum. The seventh player, Jamal Murray (20 games), joined LeBron James (2012 and 2013 with the Miami Heat) and Khris Middleton (2021 with the Milwaukee Bucks) as players to win a championship after averaging at least 40 minutes per game in the postseason.

The 2023-24 season will be one in which the league’s best players will be under the microscope in terms of how many games they play. The new player participation policy is in effect because designated star players have missed so many games over the years for various reasons.

The flip side is that stars who annually miss 20 or more games a season open up a variety of roster effects. The state of the pandemic in 2021-22 resulted in a league-record 605 players appearing in at least one game. Teams need to find contributors, and that has opened opportunities for expanded roles on all types of teams.

Forget your per-36 minute stats: Only 10 players averaged at least 36 minutes per game last season. Thirty minutes is the target number for top players, and an accessible figure that has held up over time.

(Photo of Draymond Green, Klay Thompson and Stephen Curry: Bart Young / NBAE via Getty Images)

Law Murray is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the LA Clippers. Prior to joining The Athletic, he was an NBA editor at ESPN, a researcher at NFL Media and a contributor to DrewLeague.com and ClipperBlog. Law is from Philadelphia, Pa., and is a graduate of California University of Pennsylvania and the University of Southern California. Follow Law on Twitter @LawMurrayTheNU