Kevin Garnett's Minutes Will Not Increase – Even in the Playoffs

Kevin Garnett has never played fewer than 28.7 minutes per game in any season of his 19-year NBA career. In every other season besides his rookie year and the current season, Garnett has played at least 29.7 minutes.

This season, Kevin Garnett is only playing 21.3 minutes per game.

Nets fans have seen it all season, and they can do little but throw their hands skyward when it happens: under Brooklyn Nets head coach Jason Kidd's rigid minutes restriction, Garnett is seen playing five to seven minutes of action to start the first quarter before sitting, even when he is hitting shots and not showing signs of slowing down.

Naturally, this comes with the territory of being a 37-year-old in the NBA. A coach's desire to protect his aging players is understandable, especially when the coach in question was an aging player himself less than a year ago. It's also understandable when you take into consideration that Garnett has not played in more than 71 games since the 2007-08 season.

After a dreadful start to the season where the Big Ticket shot just 36.4%, a career low for him by 10 percentage points, Garnett has had an excellent 2014 so far, shooting a brilliant 57.9% and looking much more adequate on defense at the center position. In 2013, KG played mostly at the power forward spot, where he struggled mightily against quicker bigs and looked two steps slow wherever he was on the court. Moving to the pivot spot has helped him turn his season around, but his minutes have still been held to a lowly 21 per game.

For a while, it seemed, Garnett was getting so much rest to save him for the playoffs, where his championship experience will theoretically make a difference for Brooklyn when they reach the postseason.

In a pretty surprising reveal, Kidd said during an interview this morning on the Joe and Evan Show that this would not be the case.

"Nope," Kidd said when asked if Garnett would see a boost in his minutes come playoff time.

This comes as frustrating and alarming news for fans who had hoped to see Garnett, who has looked fantastic as of late, see more action. At 39 rebounds per game, Brooklyn is the second-worst rebounding team in the NBA. It is somewhat distressing when a team's leading rebounder only averages 6.7 boards per game and even more so when he only sees the court for 21 minutes. With this news, the Nets' need for a big man who can rebound and play defense to spell Garnett becomes glaring.


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