The most important stat in fantasy basketball is minutes (unless you're Joe Johnson, Jeff Green, Evan Turner, Tayshaun Prince, John Salmons, or Arron Afflalo). It's an axiom as old as Devon Sawa himself. But this past season was the first time a player didn't breach 3,000 minutes played since the 1958-59 season when the NBA consisted of eight teams and a 72-game schedule. In fact, I had the following conversation with my boss:

Me: How many players played at least 36.0 minutes per game last season?
Kyle: 15?
Me: Lower
Kyle: 12?
Me: Lower
Kyle: 9?
Me: Lower
Kyle: 6?
Me: That is correct.

Six players averaged at least 36 minutes per game last season. Jimmy Butler led the league in minutes per game (38.7) for the second straight year, and he was joined by James Harden, Kyrie Irving, Andrew Wiggins, Anthony Davis, and LeBron James in the 36-Minute Club.

Four of last year's aforementioned six are candidates to dip below the arbitrary threshold: Irving is two months removed from surgery to repair a fractured kneecap; Harden will be joined in the backcourt by Ty Lawson; Butler is no longer supervised by Tom Thibodeau; and James recorded the lowest minute per game average of his career, averaging 35.1 minutes per game after his two-week hiatus in January.

In 2013-14, 17 players played 36 minutes or more, a group that included: Carmelo Anthony (limited to a career-low 42 games following knee surgery), Kevin Durant (limited to a career-low 27 games because of two separate foot surgeries), DeMar DeRozan (held to a career-low 60 games following a groin injury), Chandler Parsons (underwent knee surgery and may not be ready for the start of the 2015-16 season), Monta Ellis (restricted in the second half of the season after leg issues forced him to miss a game for the first time in three seasons), Stephen Curry (didn't play in 20 fourth quarters), Gordon Hayward (no significant setback to report; Quin Snyder saw fit to decrease his playing time), Kevin Love (a victim of a reduced role on a new team), John Wall (barely missed the mark last season), LaMarcus Aldridge (joined a better team with a reputation for curbing minutes), Paul George (limited to six games after breaking his leg), Kyle Lowry (played through injuries most of the second half of the season), and Nicolas Batum (played through a torn ligament in his shooting wrist, a right knee contusion, and a back problem for the majority of the season). For one reason or another, the players listed above were unable to duplicate their previous season's durability.

Five years ago, 36 players surpassed 36 minutes per game. Monta Ellis was the last player to average at least 40 minutes per game, doing so in the 2010-11 season. The amount of players achieving apex playing time has been steadily declining over the past decade, as can be seen in the table below.

*Each row is cumulative, counting every player above the threshold.

Teams are hesitant to extend players beyond an artificial number during the regular season for a variety of reasons. Some players returning from injury are imposed minute limits, and other times, teams are locked into a playoff seed or eliminated from playoff contention.

But what are some other reasons for the dilution in rotation minutes? Let's delve deeper.

Condensed Schedule

The NBA season spans 170 days and has done so for the last 16 seasons, lockout years not included. Prior to the start of the 2014-15 season, Adam Silver acquiesced to LeBron James' request of a prolonged All-Star break. While the players were afforded a week off from game action, the schedule maker was still confined to 170 days. This resulted in increased back-to-backs and fewer rest days during the season. As a whole, the league saw back-to-back contests rise from 560 to 578 over the past two seasons, both paling in comparison to the all-time high of 603 in 2009-10.

Word from Las Vegas is that more teams will play on Thursday night in an effort to curtail back-to-backs this season. Once a night belonging exclusively to TNT, this inclusion would expand the pool of game days for traditionally non-televised teams. It would also compete with Thursday Night Football through January if implemented from the start of the season and overlap the day of the trade deadline in February.

If the schedule increases its Thursday night quota, it eschews the "quality game" spectrum. For the uninitiated, quality games are nights on the NBA schedule when less than half the league plays, e.g. Thursday night. The denseness typically leaves head-to-head fantasy managers without a fully active lineup, assuming a 13-man roster with three bench spots. Savvy managers with capped weekly roster moves stream players on those nights to help maximize their games played for the weekly matchup.

Last season, Thursday exhibited five or fewer games every night, averaging 3.0 games. It was the least condensed day on the calendar.

Spreading out the schedule partially handicaps extreme streaming but not entirely. Head-to-head fantasy league aficionados with weekly move caps were encouraged to snag a player on Thursday for the weekend crunch, a maneuver aimed at winning a matchup by increasing their games played. Infusing Thursday with more games offers improved streaming options and a wider player pool in Daily Fantasy Sports leagues.

It was also reported by Zach Lowe that the NBA scheduling four games in five nights has been significantly reduced in the preliminary 2015-16 schedule, of which there were 69 last season. That implies that more Thursday games have been added to the schedule, and it's possible that the season is expanded from its normal 170-day, 25-week confinement. Besides interfering with the standard fantasy head-to-head playoffs, it would also theoretically provide NBA fans a better product with healthier players.

The 82-Game Grind

John Stockton missed four games in his first 13 seasons. Gary Payton missed seven games in his first 14 seasons in the league, averaged at least 40 minutes per game for five straight seasons, and led the 2003-04 Lakers in minutes (2,825) and games played (82). A.C. Green competed in 1,192 consecutive games, missing three games in his 16-year career.

This list of players who've missed no more than six games over the past three seasons is 17 names long. DeAndre Jordan hasn't missed a game over the last four years and holds the longest active consecutive games played streak at 322. Damian Lillard has played every game, 246 total, in his three-year career, and he is the only player to eclipse 9,000 minutes in that time.

Tristan Thompson (288) and Brandon Bass (279) are second and third on consecutive games played list, but Thompson has to contend with the four other rotation players in the Cavaliers' frontcourt (once he signs), and Bass appears destined for a timeshare with Julius Randle. Not to mention, in 41.1 minutes during the NBA Finals, Thompson averaged 1.0 block, 0.7 steals, and 0.3 assists. Neither player moves the needle in 9-category fantasy leagues.

Organizations are inclined to rest players toward the end of the season based on their position in the standings. Whether draft related or locked into a playoff seed, teams reduce injury risk by sitting players when they've nothing to gain from fielding their best lineup. As noted below, players competing in every game waffles based on the season.

*The Celtics and Pacers canceled a game due to the Boston Marathon bombings and never rescheduled since it had no effect on the standings. Brandon Bass, Jeff Green, and Tyler Hansbrough competed in all 81 games that season.

Health Monitoring

Teams are much more cognizant of their players' enervation, allowing them to notice trends. The Golden State Warriors and Philadelphia 76ers have provided voluntary health monitoring devices for their players. The Washington Wizards employ a performance staff to observe players' fatigue and limit practice time based on dipped on-court production. The Dallas Mavericks biometrically track players' sleeping habits. SportVu player tracking provides the league big data on its players. Whether it's on or off the court, dozens of teams excessively monitor players to track the well-being of their investments and help prevent injury.

Injuries fall under the health monitoring umbrella. Baxter Holmes of ESPN wrote an article digging deeper into injuries devastating the youth of today's NBA. He notes that league-wide missed games due to injury hovered around the yearly average, but the amalgamation of sleep depravity, early specialization in basketball, low levels of calcium, and unorthodox weight training have ignited the recent injury epidemic amongst recent rookie classes.

Copycat League

The San Antonio Spurs won the 2014 NBA title without playing anyone more than 30 minutes per game during the regular season. The current champion Warriors were high marked by Stephen Curry's 32.7 minutes per game. In its basic form, both teams blitzed their conference and were able to rest players down the stretch while limiting their in-game playing time due to point differential. Moreover, their depth and culture alleviated the pressures of performing at a high level nearly every night.

Last season, the Indiana Pacers became the second team in NBA history to end the season without anyone averaging at least 30 minutes per game. They lost Lance Stephenson and Paul George, and David West and Roy Hibbert had their roles reduced. Injuries dictated the minute redistribution.

While they weren't as successful as the Spurs or Warriors, the Pacers did right by George Hill, who suffered a knee contusion and torn quad at different junctures in the season. When Hill played, the Pacers were 26-17; when he started, they were 23-13; and when he was unavailable, they sank to 12-27. In his 36 starts, Hill played 31.2 minutes per game. Donald Sloan, the team's starting point guard while Hill and C.J. Watson were unavailable, was the only other Pacer to average over 30 minutes per game in his starts, claiming 31.6 minutes in 21 starts.

Basketball Year-Round

The best players in the world compete from the start of the preseason in October until mid-June. After a few weeks off, they're reducing the imperfections in their game, and if they're lucky enough, they join the Olympic team. The first- and second-year players will dredge through Summer League in July and transition into training camp in late September. While NBA minutes take their toll, all the hours of developing their game in the gym and playing pickup games doesn't surface on the back of a basketball card. It's the overtraining that escapes the health calculus.

International competition places additional burden on foreign-born players. There are a variety of tournaments from July through September, mainly comprised of FIBA qualifying competitions.

International Depth

The Charlotte Bobcats entered the league during the 2004-05 season. Gerald Wallace, Primoz Brezec, and Jason Kapono headlined the expansion draft. Players like Sean May, Lonny Baxter, and Melvin Ely became rotation players and diluted the NBA talent pool. As recently as three seasons ago, B.J. Mullens played 27 minutes a night and started 41 games.

As time progressed, international players flooded the NBA, infusing teams with competent benches and pushing out the likes of Juan Dixon and Mateen Cleaves. Last season, the NBA set a record with 101 international players on opening night and 104 by season's end, claiming 22 percent of all roster spots and 21 percent of all available minutes. International players have found a niche in the league, increasing their grasp on minutes played by five percent over the past 10 years.

International MVPs are imported to become backups and third stringers in the NBA. While some like Rudy Fernandez and Fran Vazquez enjoy salary-cap free leagues and fame overseas, Serbian Super League MVP Boban Marjanovi? and Euroleague MVP Nemanja Bjelica are hoarding rosters spots domestically. Furkan Aldemir and EuroLeague leading rebounder Joffrey Lauvergne joined struggling teams midway through last season, each earning at least 11 minutes per game. While they've yet to master the NBA game, they've imperceptibly increased the talent stateside.

Technically, you can argue the Sixers are this era's expansion team. In fact, they carried the aforementioned Mullens during the tail end of the 2013-14 season. It's also true that Kyrie Irving, Reggie Jackson, and Tim Duncan are considered international players because they were born outside the United States. Neither rebuttal diminishes the international infusion and their importance once conforming to the NBA game.

Active Roster Spots

The league expanded the active roster from 12 to 13 players for the 2011-12 lockout season and voted to make the change permanent later that year. Coaches can utilize 13 players, permitting them more options when emptying their entire bench during blowouts. This only occurs if the team has 13 healthy players in uniform, which is almost never the case. Regardless, every once in a while I'll view a box score with 13 players logging minutes, assuaging the top eight players in the rotation.

Coaching To Your Opponent

Instead of imposing their own philosophy on the game, some coaches adapt to the opposition. Because of this, their rotations lack consistency and integrity. This tactic typically reveals itself in the second half of games when halftime adjustments are implemented. Other times, coaches aren't able to trust starters to work within their system.

Coach Dwane Casey is notorious for matching down to his competition. When Jonas Valanciunas isn't dominating an international big for 34 minutes a game, he falls victim to the Raptors' opposing coach and lineup. In a recent interview posted on NBA.com, Casey hinted Valanciunas is in line for similar treatment at the end of games when he shifts DeMarre Carroll to power forward and intermingles Luis Scola and Patrick Patterson at center.

Casey is stuck between developing Valanciunas and trying to win. Winning requires scoring more than your opponent, which Valanciunas has yet to master. He was the only Raptor rotation player to register a negative plus/minus last year. Valanciunas was benched in 23 fourth quarters last season, and if it wasn't for the Raptors' 42-point win over the Bucks, the differential between winning margin based on Valanciunas' involvement in the fourth quarter would have been negligible. More than half the time that Valanciunas didn't enter the game in the fourth quarter, the Raptors were embroiled in a single-digit contest heading into the final stanza.

A Shrinking, Positionless League

Only 10 starting centers averaged at least 30.0 minutes per game last season, six of whom settled below 30.7 minutes per game. The former has been the norm since the invention of the shot clock; the latter is a newer phenomenon. The two outlier seasons, 2000-01 and 1960-61, were the most recent instances of only four starting centers playing at least 30 minutes per game.

We're in a league where lumbering big men unable to defend the rim or knock down a three-pointer are starting lineup placeholders. If they can't make free throws, don't expect them on the court during intentional foul marathons. Traditional centers have become late-game liabilities, or perhaps I'm overreacting to the NBA Finals and losing perspective on the rigors of a lengthy season.

The league is converging toward the middle. It's great for fantasy players who thrive off multi-positional eligibility. Kobe Bryant, DeMarre Carroll, Paul George, Rudy Gay, and Andrew Wiggins are expected to play minutes at power forward this season. A fantasy manager could optimize their lineup by using all five players in their shooting guard, guard, small forward, power forward, and forward slots. Your flexibility is only limited to the host site's baseline for position eligibility: Yahoo! tends to be more liberal, and ESPN is more judicious on that front.

HGH Testing

Players could have been weening themselves off Human Growth Hormone (HGH) prior to this Fall's initial testing phase. I don't have concrete evidence of the assertion. This is purely conjecture.

Players are subjected to two unannounced in-season tests and one off-season test. The first positive test results in a 20-game ban, roughly a quarter of the season; the second positive test invokes a 45-game ban, more than half the year.

With harsh penalties for HGH users and the potential of a lengthier season, the prudent move may be to jettison those found guilty. A 20-game ban would keep a player out beyond a month, potentially two if it aligns with the All-Star break.

Holding injured players could also prove fruitless. Without the help of HGH, players may require longer recovery time, time you could spend rotating waiver wire lottery tickets on your roster. Drafting or trading for injured players incurs more risk this time around. While it'll distill to a case-by-case system, injuries already tend to linger, and it's not as though the entire league relies on banned performance-enhancing drugs. I reside on the pessimistic side of the scale, and that risk-averse nature will inform my decision-making when saddled with injured players this season.

Counter Argument

It's possible the upcoming schedule offers extra days of rest. Exactly how much remains to be seen. It's also possible I've fallen victim to one of the classic blunders: Never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line. But does more time off automatically translate to an increase in starter's minutes? If true, you've read this entire article days before its expiration date.

So let's assume the regular season is elongated and I've overreacted to one year's worth of data. What are the implications?

Firstly, additional rest can help improve the quality of the game. That rest could manifest itself into fewer blowouts, forcing coaches to play their best players longer. The hypothetical narrowing point differential may stem from additional practice days and valuable prep time for coaching staffs to gameplan against the subsequent opponent. The rest, sleep, health, and preparation are all interconnected, and they influence an improved product.

Teams with fewer days off adhere to wonky traveling schedules. Remember that Raptors' 42-point blowout win over the Bucks I mentioned earlier? The Bucks were playing their third game in four nights; The Raptors had played one game the previous five. It's no secret teams playing four games in five nights are running on fumes by the end of the expedition. Leveling the playing field can create competitive games on a nightly basis, reducing garbage time and necessitating increased playing time for the core rotation players.

Injuries could drastically be reduced. Fatigue elevates the chances of non-contact injuries, as noted by Golden State Warriors director of athletic performance, Keke Lyles, in an article by CBS's Ken Berger. This is the most unlikely of all the outcomes, but it's fun to imagine, especially as a rotisserie league advocate.

While an isolated back-to-back set may not make a significant difference in performance, the accumulation of four-games-in-five-nights and five-games-in-seven-nights typically reduce performance and mental stability. Offering players more rest days can improve efficiency. The Bulls' Jimmy Butler, the league leader in minutes per game, registered a significant decrease in efficiency without rest, as seen below. The same pattern held true for the other five players who averaged at least 36 minutes per game, sans Anthony Davis because he's an athletic anomaly.

Based on cursory research, I've pinpointed a select group of players with the potential to crack 36 minutes per game this season: Anthony Davis, Andrew Wiggins, John Wall (averaged 35.9 minutes per game last season), Victor Oladipo (averaged 38.5 minutes per game post-All-Star break; missed training camp and beginning of the season due to ACL and facial injuries), Damian Lillard (the lone wolf), Trevor Ariza, DeMar DeRozan (averaged 35.5 minutes per game after returning from groin injury), Eric Bledsoe (averaged 35.9 minutes post-All-Star break), Goran Dragic (especially if Mario Chalmers gets shipped out of town), and Jarrett Jack (averaged 35.6 minutes per game in 27 starts last season). This group is guard dominant, much like the NBA. Teams still require the presence of a capable ball handler and facilitator. Only Dragic, Jack, and Ariza are older than 25, all straddling the 30-year-old line.

Expanding the schedule would definitely allow coaches to increase a starter's minutes. The only question now is will they continue down this minute restricting path, or will a theoretically improved product and healthier athletes resurrect a surge of 40-minute per game players? We'll find out this season how the rotations shake out, but you shouldn't jump to conclusions after the first two months; nearly 10 players were on pace to crack 36 minutes per game through December of last season.

Why Harp On 36 Minutes Per Game?

I was recently struck by two independent tweets referencing per-36-minute stats. On one hand, Tom Haberstroh was onto something when he highlighted Greg Monroe's per 36 minute numbers without Andre Drummond. On the other, Ian Begley had the gall to tell me Kyle O'Quinn averaged 13 points, 10.5 rebounds, and 2.1 blocks per 36 minutes. One is more likely than the other to ascend to that plateau, but given coach Jason Kidd's rotational diversity, it seems unlikely either crests beyond 34 minutes.

The per-36-minute metric merely expands a player's statistics by scaling up their current averages to 36 minutes per game. It isn't completely infallible or entirely predictive. Per-36 isn't purely translatable over the full duration. Increased responsibility against superior competition tends to decrease efficiency, and stamina rapidly declines over time.

I understand why per-36-minute stats are bandied about when forecasting player stats. I'm not immune to its hypnotic augury. It's a simple metric aimed at providing an imaginary ceiling of what a player could produce if he was fully unleashed. It's seeped into the basketball lexicon. Per-36-minute stats are convenient and proliferate every stats page from NBA.com to Basketball-Reference.

Ultimately, I may be overemphasizing a two-year trend, assuming it will sustain next season. Perhaps I'm too focused on the arbitrary number 36, and it's inferior round number 30. I'm paddling up a hill, unlikely to get the public to subscribe to per-30-minute numbers or per-possession-based data, but per-36 is simplistic and no longer jives with me. It feels like a crutch considering only six players were able to provide 36 minutes worth of stats last season. In the end, stats like per 36 are a piece of the puzzle, and when combined with other data, it helps paint the entire picture.