In the eighth minute of Game Six of the Western Conference first round playoffs, the Houston Rockets’ Amen Thompson was dispossessed on the way to the basket. The Los Angeles Lakers’ Deandre Ayton grabbed the loose ball and unleashed a two-handed overhead throw towards LeBron James loitering near half-court. The pass arrived with such velocity James had to parry it off the floor. As the bounce reached head height, he first-timed a one-handed cross-court gift to Rui Hachimura who glided in for the easy score.
One television commentator described the assist as a “bullet pass”. His colleague gushed that James is “the all-time leading scorer in the NBA and his best skill is the ability to pass the ball”. A cameo of improvisation, vision and unselfishness midway through the first quarter; the speed of thought and clinical execution set the tone for the rest of last Friday night.
LeBron was going to be LeBron, the Lakers were going to close out the series 4-2 and punch their ticket to the next round. A man deep into what should be his sporting senescence turned back the clock and put on a show. One more time.
“I just went over to him and was like, ‘you’re insane’,” said Austin Reaves, his team-mate, afterwards. “‘The stuff that you’re doing is … not normal.’ Age, whatever, he’s been in the league for 23 years, the way he demands a game, it’s impressive. I don’t think that you can say how special he was.”
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James turns 42 in December. He played more minutes in the Rockets’ match (his 66th outing of the season) than any of his team-mates, top-scored with 28 points and led both squads in assists too. He has played more games in the NBA and sunk more baskets than anybody ever. Nobody has started more or scored more in playoff matches either.
It’s been estimated that he’s suited up against 35 per cent of all players in league history. That stat came out around the time in 2023 when a rookie named Jabari Smith Jr sidled alongside him on court and said: “You played against my dad in your first game ever.”
The gaudy numbers are only one way of measuring the breadth of what he has achieved. It will soon be quarter of a century since a Sports Illustrated cover declared him “The Chosen One”. At a time when that accolade still mattered in popular culture, it was a ridiculous amount of pressure to heap upon the callow shoulders of a teen phenom who had grown up in the maw of dire poverty in Akron, Ohio. With predictable fanfare, ESPN started to broadcast his high school games live on national television soon after. No biggie.
Almost every day since, he has somehow, some way, lived up to the ludicrous advance billing in a manner that eventually proved beyond even Tiger Woods, a victim of the same kind of hyperbole just a few years before.
The two men took very different paths. As Woods’s life pretty much unravelled once his wife took a pitching wedge to his Cadillac Escalade back in 2009, the biggest criticism of James as his career wore on is that he was hanging around just so he could one day play on the same team as his son Bronny. As if it represented some sort of grievous crime against sport to stay fit enough to potentially share a locker room with your boy.
Even if he pulled strings to orchestrate the kid making the Lakers’ bench, and the jury remains out on whether his scion, averaging 2.9 points per game, will endure in the league, surely somebody who grew up without a father can be forgiven this little nepotism.
LeBron’s mother, Gloria, was just 16 when she gave birth to him and his peripatetic childhood was marred by bouts of homelessness during which he crashed on friends’ couches. Whether or not he clinches a fifth championship, the way in which he chased the thrill of a moment like unfurling a pass for Bronny to score in Game 3 against the Rockets (“Father to son, a playoff moment” – roared the TV commentator) is one more benchmark of his uniqueness.
Defying the ravages of time involves spending $1.5m a year retaining a full-time personal chef, nutritionist, masseuse, recovery coach, and a former Navy Seal described as his biomechanist. Having long ago invested in a hyperbaric chamber and cryotherapy unit, he wears compression boots to enhance circulation after games.
With half a billion already earned in salary and at least that much again garnered through endorsements, every part of his daily routine is about biohacking to keep him in optimum physical shape to allow him to still influence games.
Aside from offering yet more proof of his commitment to remaining a force in his 40s, dragging an injury-hit Lakers, deprived of the mercurial Luka Doncic since April 2nd, past the Rockets inevitably reignited the old barstool argument about whether he or Michael Jordan is the Goat (greatest of all time). As tiresome as comparisons between players from different eras inevitably are, the very fact there is an ongoing debate is testimony to James’s enduring impact.
For all that, his team are serious underdogs entering the second round against the reigning champions Oklahoma Thunder, a stacked outfit hotly favoured to retain the title. In the best of seven series, the Lakers appear to have no chance. Except LeBron.
