Rui Hachimura's minutes jumped 9.0 a game
Over his last 10 games, Hachimura played nearly a full extra quarter a night compared to his season average.
Rui Hachimura is averaging 38.6 minutes a night over his last 10 games. That is 9.0 minutes above his season mark of 29.7, in a 2025-26 season where he has played 78 games for the Lakers and scored 12.2 points a game. The jump shows up in one stat, but it changes how a game is built around him.
Thirty-eight minutes a night puts a player on the floor for nearly every meaningful possession. For Hachimura, that means fewer rest stretches and a bigger share of the Lakers' offense and defense running through him late in games. The last game in that stretch was May 11, 2026, so this is recent, not a one-off from earlier in the year.
For this to hold, the Lakers need Hachimura to stay healthy through heavier workloads and need the rotation decisions that pushed his minutes up to keep favoring him over other frontcourt options. If either changes — an injury, a coaching adjustment, or a return to the deeper bench rotation the team used earlier in the season — his minutes would drift back toward that 29.7 season average.
The gap between 29.7 and 38.6 is the whole story here. It is not a small uptick. It is a different role, played out over 10 straight games, and it is worth watching whether the Lakers keep leaning on him this hard as the season moves forward.