When LeBron James broke another NBA record earlier this month, the one for most regular-season minutes played in a career, his Los Angeles Lakers teammates handled the moment in typical locker room fashion.
They made fun of him.
“They told me I’m old as hell,” James quipped.
By NBA standards, they’re not wrong. He was dubbed “The Kid from Akron” when the Ohio native entered the league with a limitless future nearly 22 years ago. He’s now the 40-year-old from Los Angeles with wisps of gray in his beard. His milestone birthday comes Monday, one that will make him the first player in NBA history to play in his teens, 20s, 30s and 40s.
Such a feat has happened a couple of dozen times in baseball before. It has happened in hockey — Gordie Howe was a five-decade player, appearing in the NHL from his teens to his 50s — but never in the NFL or the NBA. Until now. James is making more basketball history and creating a club all of his own.
“In some ways he’s a freak of nature,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “I’ve been around a lot of great players and he’s one of the hardest-working players I’ve been around. I mean, he doesn’t take a day off. He seems to not take an afternoon off. He’s always working on some part of his body. You meet with him and he’s always soaking something or eating something with some contraption attached to him.”
A 40th birthday, in NBA terms, means the on-court end is near. James will become the 30th player to appear in a regular-season game with a “4” as the first digit of his age; only nine logged more than 51 games after that birthday. He’ll be the 32nd player to play after turning 40 overall; Tim Duncan and Danny Schayes both turned 40 during playoff runs in what became their final seasons.
And for the most part, big numbers are largely nonexistent at that age.
Only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who did it three times), John Stockton (twice), Michael Jordan, Robert Parish and Karl Malone have averaged more than 10 points in a season after turning 40. Jordan averaged 22.4 points in 30 games after turning 40 in his final season with Washington; Malone is the most recent to do it, averaging 13.2 points in 42 games after turning 40 while with the Lakers in 2003-04.
James, meanwhile, is still putting up All-Star level numbers: 23.5 points, 9 assists and 7.5 rebounds per game. Forget how doing that at 40 is unheard of. Doing that at 30 is practically unheard of. The only players to have those numbers in all three categories in a season after turning 30 are James (who did it at 33 and 35) and James Harden (who did it at 31).
“The size, the strength and the IQ … with his frame and the way he takes care of himself, he doesn’t have to be the best athlete on the planet. At one time he was,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We’re not talking about the best athlete in the association. He was the best athlete on the planet arguably, just size, strength, agility, explosiveness combined. But at this size and if he just wants to slow the game down and just play off his brain and IQ, he could do that for another decade. I doubt he’ll find interest in that. But he could.”
Nobody knows when James will stop playing. And it surely isn’t going to get any easier: James wanted to play all 82 games this season and couldn’t, was widely criticized when the Lakers went through a slump earlier this season and took tons of backlash when his team drafted his son Bronny in the second round last summer in what many thought was simple nepotism.
He has always been a lightning rod. If his play declines at 40, his naysayers will be lined up to revel in that.
“It’s a lot harder, physically and emotionally, to face what those guys face night after night after night,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said of top NBA stars getting up in years, like James and the Warriors’ Stephen Curry — who’ll turn 37 in March. “There’s a reason players have to retire. You know, they can’t do it forever.”
James won’t either.
But even while playing alongside elite 30-year-olds like Giannis Antetokounmpo, James — who reportedly spends more than $1.5 million annually on his fitness and has an on-site mechanic of sorts at all times for anything his body needs in personal athletic training guru in Mike Mancias — has shown how to play long past what used to be considered an NBA player’s peak years.
“What he’s done is incredible, never been done, especially at the level he’s playing,” Antetokounmpo said. “For me, I always look at the other players that kind of set the blueprint for us, and this is something that’s never been done before. I definitely want to play late into my career, like 37, 38, 39, as much as my body can allow me to play. But I have to do a good job of taking care of my body, which I believe I do, but he kind of set the path for us, set the blueprint for us. We’ve just got to follow.”
The accolades are countless: James is the NBA’s all-time scoring leader, has a place in the GOAT conversation, most minutes played, four NBA championships, three Olympic gold medals, 20 and likely soon to be 21 All-Star selections, oldest to do this, oldest to do that, generational wealth with a net worth exceeding $1 billion, and on and on and on.
It begs the question: What does one get a 40-year-old who has everything?
“I don’t even know,” lamented Bronny James — another example of how James is one of one, becoming the first dad in NBA history to have his son as a teammate.
James has hinted that the end is near. “Don’t make me feel old right now,” he said, only half-kiddingly, when asked earlier this month about the looming 40th birthday. He is under contract for next season but hasn’t offered any guarantees about how long he will play, saying he isn’t “going to play that much longer, to be completely honest” and insisting that he won’t be “playing till the wheels fall off” because he doesn’t want to disrespect the game.
No player scored more points in his teens than James did. Same goes for his 20s. Only Malone and Abdul-Jabbar scored more points in their 30s than James. And now, here comes his 40s, with James still going strong.
It’s the final decade of a basketball career like none other.
“Fans pay attention every time he steps on the court because they’re watching one of the greatest ever and still playing an incredibly high level, despite turning 40 this month,” Silver said. “I marvel at him.”
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