It's Not the Years, It's the Miles The first two games of the 2012 N.B.A. finals played out like repeats of the same horse race. The Miami Heat ran to an early lead, looking nearly invincible, then the Oklahoma City Thunder stormed from behind. In Game 1, that was enough for the Thunder, and they won easily. In Game 2, the Heat's lead was too large to overcome. But in each case the Thunder seemed to control the second half. "That's what they do: they keep on coming," Miami Coach Erik Spoelstra told reporters after Game 1. As good as Oklahoma City is, one alternative theory on why the momentum changes as the games wear on is the burden placed on each team's two superstars. LeBron James, still seen as a symbol of youth in the N.B.A., may be the oldest 27-year-old in the game's history. Nine seasons into his career, James has logged 27,497 minutes in 689 regular-season games and 4,862 minutes in 112 postseason games. That does not count the huge workload that comes with his being a member of the national team. For an idea of how unusual that workload is, Michael Jordan, the standard James is often held to, did not record his 27,000th minute until he was 32 and had returned from a brief retirement and sojourn as a minor-league baseball player. Wilt Chamberlain, who averaged more than 48 minutes a game in the 1961-62 season, and led the league in minutes in each of his first five seasons, did not reach 27,000 minutes until he was 30. James's teammate and friend Dwyane Wade is nearly three years older than James but has played more than 5,000 fewer minutes. All of those players logged minutes in college that James did not, but the rigors of an 82-game N.B.A. season, along with the physical punishment that accompanies it, are vastly different from the college game. James is hardly the type of player to blame fatigue, but the results of the first two games were stark. The Heat outscored the Thunder in the first quarter, 56-37. In the second quarter, they tied, 53-53. Then in the second half, the Thunder took over, leading the third quarter, 51-42, and the fourth, 60-43. James became less of a factor as each game progressed. In 40 playoff games, the Thunder's Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook averaged 41.5 and 37.3 minutes a game. While not drastically lower than the averages of James and Wade (43.4 and 40.3), that they are only 23 and combined for fewer regular-season minutes than James alone means their legs are far fresher. James Harden, Oklahoma City's versatile sixth man, is able to come off the bench and assume Durant's role as the team's top scorer and Westbrook's role as a ball handler, and the Thunder have a system that is more balanced for the duration of a game. As the series heads to Miami on Sunday, it will be interesting to see if the Heat have made adjustments to deal with the imbalance.