CLEVELAND -- Ninety-nine games.

In the past four years, LeBron James crammed into his schedule an extra 99 games that were above and beyond the normal basketball grind. The rundown: 87 playoff games with the Miami Heat, eight Olympic games with Team USA in London and four All-Star appearances.

Also during that four-year timeline, James played in 294 out of a possible 312 regular-season games, so it wasn't as if he was saving himself during the 82-game slate to be fresh for the postseason and overseas competition.

All of the pounding, all of the minutes, all of the back-to-backs and road trips and four-games-in-five-night stretches caught up to James in the first couple months this season.

With James just having turned 30 years old and the calendar about to turn to 2015, Cleveland Cavaliers management, along with the training staff and team doctors, devised a plan to invigorate the four-time MVP in the middle of the season.

The problem? Convincing James to sit down when he was still able to be effective because of skill and experience, even if his athleticism and explosiveness were lacking.

"I'm stubborn about playing basketball," James admitted a week into the recovery program. "I just love the game. I hate missing games. You just look at my record and my résumé of missing games, it's been one of the toughest things for me. But I just had to listen to my body, listen to the docs, listen to my trainer, and that's what we came up with."

For a guy who missed just 44 games through his first 11 seasons in the league, this was, no doubt, a radical move to make.

But now, as we near the two-week mark since James returned from his two-week break, it's becoming more and more apparent the decision to have him sit out might have saved the Cavs' season.

Their 129-90 win over the Charlotte Hornets on Friday -- a Hornets team that came into the night winners of eight of their past nine games -- was a complete annihilation. The Cavs held Charlotte to 13 points in the first quarter, a low for any opponent in the opening period all season. Meanwhile, the Cavs put up 75 points in the first 24 minutes, their season high for points in a half. Not only that, but their 35-point halftime cushion was a franchise best, edging the 66-32 jump they had on the Oklahoma City Thunder back on Nov. 26, 2008, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.

And James was just as big a reason for it as anyone, scoring 25 points on 9-for-15 shooting (including a right-to-left-hand windmill dunk, not to mention a half-court alley-oop from J.R. Smith), dishing out nine assists and grabbing six rebounds. All of this came in just 27 minutes, as his night was done before the fourth quarter began with the Cavs holding a 103-63 lead after three.

Cleveland has now won five straight, is 5-1 since James' return and 23-12 this season with James in the lineup.

And James is now at a point at which he can reflect on what that rest period did for him.

"I listened to [my body] for the first time in my career, and maybe I need to do it more often," James said at shootaround Friday.

It's a practice regularly employed by James' nemesis, those pesky San Antonio Spurs, the team that hung two of his three Finals losses on his otherwise impeccable NBA résumé. Perhaps there was some "If you can’t beat 'em, join 'em" reasoning on James' part when he eventually acquiesced to the Spurs-like shutdown plan.

The strategy has its supporters, including Utah Jazz coach Quin Snyder. "I do think from a coaching standpoint, I don't think it’s taboo in any way," Snyder said this week of the all-or-nothing gamble the Cavs made with James. "I think it makes sense."

But, then again, there are those, such as Charlotte coach Steve Clifford, who still consider it an affront to the game, much the way James used to.

"I'm from the other school. Obviously, I think that's worked really well in San Antonio and I think a lot of people do that. When I was in New York -- it's funny, Patrick [Ewing] and I talk about it -- he said he would have never accepted that as a player," Clifford said before the game Friday. "I remember with Jeff [Van Gundy] we had an older team with Mark Jackson, Latrell [Sprewell], Allan Houston, Larry Johnson, those guys. We were the opposite. It was more of a mentality to grind it out and play your best every night, so I think it's a philosophical [view]."

James Jones, a teammate of James' in Miami the past four seasons when he was in warrior mode, said the shift in philosophy was necessary.

"He's played a lot of games," Jones said. "He'd been playing for four straight years, basically every day, night in and night out, until the Finals. So, at some point, you figured he'd need a break, and not just away from basketball. [A break] to be really be able to rehab. So it was well deserved. I'd say well earned and it was something that he needed to get back not all of his pop, but a lot of it."

James is applying that pop not just to highlight-reel dunks and on-court celebrations, but to down-and-dirty defense. He had four steals and a block against the Hornets. He has 14 steals in six games since coming back from his rest.

And even if Clifford might not have agreed with the method, he couldn't argue with the results.

"Right now, he's really, he's flying around out there," Clifford said of James. "It's a little scary to watch."

What’s scary is that if James is going to be feeling this good, playing this well, staying this engaged for the second half of the season into the playoffs while surrounded by new pieces such as Timofey Mozgov, J.R. Smith and Iman Shumpert who have all, to a man, expressed their gratitude for being in their new situation, then the Cavs could and should keep improving from this point.

If James is going to be the man in full, his Cavs will become a team in full.

"I know from experience it's a process and things don't happen overnight," James said.

Yes, but this turnaround started when he rested a fortnight.

"Right now, I feel like this is the team that I envisioned," James continued. "This is the style of basketball that I envisioned. Obviously, the points we put up tonight -- I didn't envision that every night, but we how we share the ball, how we defend, that should be our staple every night."