In my experience, there's some truth to this.
In 1975 I purchased a new 8-3/8" 29-2.
After several years of hunting use, I used it for revolver silhouette shooting. 240 grain FMJ with 22.0 of 2400 was my standard load.

After firing several thousand of these, it started to occasionally reverse rotate the cylinder upon firing.

Later S&W introduced the "endurance" package to address this issue.

My $0.03 - draw your own conclusions.

__________________
-jwk-
US Army '72-'95