One of the perks of observing LeBron James's 22 NBA seasons is constantly being presented with new, concise ways to sum up the absurdity of that career. Here's one he gave us during Tuesday night's 136-115 win over the Pelicans: In a game where James went for 34-8-6 and became the first player in league history to score 50,000 combined regular-season and postseason points, his son played four minutes of garbage time and scored two points.
Give a night like that to any other NBA player navigating the downslope of his career, and it might land like a party. One last game in which the old man summons what remains of his guile and athleticism to remind people that he really used to be like that. Michael Jordan spent the last years of his career sweating out turnaround jumpers in Washington for the sake of chasing nights like these. For LeBron James, who is 40 years old, last night was just another routine game in what might be the most impressive season of this guy's career.
It seems silly now, but in the immediate aftermath of the Luka Doncic trade there was a way to read the move as a repudiation of James. From behind the eyes of a LeBron hater, the trade signaled the Lakers' desire to move on from one era of the team and into the next. They were tired of spending every offseason and trade deadline trying rejigger a roster around their aging and increasingly defense-averse star. So out went Anthony Davis, James's handpicked running mate and the load-bearing beam of the Lakers' defensive structure, and in came Doncic, a superstar who replicates almost all of James's skills and is a decade and a half younger than him. How Doncic and James would fit together, and how the rest of this season would go, were not important. The trade was all about Lakers GM Rob Pelinka putting a firm hand on James's shoulder and pushing him toward the retirement home.
Never subscribe to the worldview of a LeBron hater; they haven't been right once. The Lakers are the second seed in the West, James and Doncic are wonderfully synergized, and the old man is playing some of the most inspiring basketball of his career. In the 12 games James has played since the Doncic trade, he is averaging 28 points, 10 rebounds, and seven assists per game while putting up 54/44/80 shooting splits. Shuffle up his Basketball Reference page so that his numbers from his age-40 season slide into his age-31 season, and nothing would seem amiss.
The numbers speak for themselves, but the way they have arrived adds another chapter to the story of James's career. If the Doncic trade was meant to signal to James that his time is at an end, it has had an opposite, rejuvenating effect. He is strutting around like a dad who just bought new grill for the summer, and he couldn't be happier to hand the tongs over to Doncic.
It is a gift and occasionally a curse to have a basketball genius like James on your team—he knows when his team has the juice, and when it doesn't. The Lakers of November and December did not have the juice, and James could be caught playing like he knew it. But Doncic's arrival has opened up a golden path in front of James, and rather than try to resist or tame Doncic's influence on the roster, he has decided to go along for the ride. It is really something to watch James, the best offensive engine to have ever existed, seamlessly transform himself into exactly the type of finisher and secondary playmaker Doncic needs to thrive. While Doncic is busy establishing himself as the Lakers' new franchise player (he had 30 points, 15 assists, and eight rebounds on Tuesday night), James is happily shooting threes off pin-downs, running in transition, rebounding, cutting every chance he gets, and anchoring what has suddenly become one of the NBA's most fearsome defenses.
This shit is not supposed to happen. Forget about a 40-year-old putting up good numbers—we're not supposed to see a star with James's pride and pedigree navigate the end of his career with this much grace. We should be having rough chuckles at him performing Joel Embiid–style defensive lowlights, cringing at the fact that his son has a make-work NBA job, and depleting our "LeGM 🤣" joke reserves. Instead we are watching him undergo yet another evolutionary step while playing some of the best basketball of his career and helping to turn his team into a legitimate title contender. It's hard to watch all this and not conclude that you are seeing the GOAT at work.
