DETROIT -- For those who obsess over LeBron James' minutes, Monday was a good night.

James played a season-low 27 minutes in the Cavs' 116-88 win over the Detroit Pistons, exiting the game with 1:40 left in the third quarter having scored 18 points with eight assists.

James is 32, and even with the easy night against the Pistons still leads the NBA with 37.9 minutes per game. Giannis Antetokounmpo, 22, is second with 37.8 minutes for Milwaukee.

Because James is going for his eighth consecutive Finals, which means he plays into June, no one has played more basketball than him during this stretch.

Even Cavs rival Draymond Green of the Warriors said last week he thought James was playing too many minutes -- he's now played seven of 17 games above 40 minutes.

James said Green was right. James said his minutes would go down once injured players like Isaiah Thomas, Derrick Rose, and Tristan Thompson return.

James' coach, Tyronn Lue, has grown tired of constantly being asked about the minutes, however.

"Yeah, I hear about that all the time," Lue said. "I played with Michael Jordan when he was 39 he played 37 minutes a night. Karl Malone was 37, played 38 minutes a night, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Magic Johnson, Kobe. Everybody's built different. If you're one of the greats, sometimes you've got to play, sometimes you get rest like tonight."

James said after Monday's win: "You make so much a big thing about my minutes. It's not a huge issue. But at the end of the day, when we can get a win like this, everybody benefits from it. Not just me. Everybody."

After a win last week over Charlotte, James told cleveland.com in response to Green's comments: "We want to get those minutes down for sure. But as of right now, we've had two point guards out and we've had some different lineup changes, so, I've had to play more minutes than I would like, and more minutes than my teammates would like me to have."

This isn't likely a clash between Lue and James over workload, but rather a plea to reporters to stop asking him about it.

Lue did indeed play with Jordan in Washington for the final two seasons of Jordan's illustrious career, and in those two seasons (2001-03) Jordan averaged 34.9 and 37.0 minutes per game, respectively. Jordan was 39 when he retired after that final season.

But James has already passed Jordan in regular-season minutes, and needs just three to pass Shaquille O'Neal (41,918 minutes) for 24th in NBA history.

Factoring in playoffs, James has played 51,043 minutes. Jordan played 48,485 in both the regular season and playoffs over 15 seasons, but he retired twice before he even joined the Wizards. This is James' 15th season.

Abdul-Jabbar is indeed the NBA's all-time leader in minutes played (57,446 during the regular season), followed by Malone (54,852).