It’s time to appreciate the undisputed greatness of LeBron James
LeBron James will be available to start his 23rd season, adding to a career full of unforgettable moments and marks.
The everyday phrase for those who seek to create peace in the debates of GOAT for any sport it is undoubtedly, “don’t compare them, enjoy them.” With LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Bill Russell and any of the candidates for this award in the NBA, it is more than valid to assume that position.
Each player represented an era, and frankly, each one has something in common: imposed records that seem totally unattainable for the rest of the basketball players of the present and the future. Russell has his 11 titles in 13 years with the Boston Celtics which, with the salary cap, draft lottery and competitive balance, simply seems impossible.
Jordan has countless playoff records, such as having scored more points than 268 of the 269 opponents he faced throughout his career in a series (Terry Cummings, in 1985, beat him by two tenths of a point) and being the only player to average more than 40 points per game in the NBA Finals, as he did in 1993 against the Phoenix Suns.
Today, LeBron James and his impressive longevity have led him to be the holder of many records, many of which honor his ability to stay on the court and play at a high level, including the Holy Grail of NBA records: most points scored in a career, when he surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 2023.
To the good fortune of NBA fans, it still seems like we have time left with LeBron, whether for one season, or even longer. Here, only some of the reasons why we should hold in esteem a player who has defined an entire generation of professional basketball will be presented.
Unattainable records
Taking the regular season and playoffs into account, James enters the 2025-26 season with a total of 50,473 points scored. It’s an outrageous amount and looks even more impressive when you take into account that LeBron has never scored 3,000 points in any of his 22 NBA seasons.
In the 2017-18 season, the last one with the Cleveland Cavaliers, James scored 2,999 points including the NBA playoffs and Finals. In 2019-20, his only campaign that ended in a championship with Los Angeles Lakers, James scored 2,278, the last time he scored more than 2,000 points. The player closest to this record is Kevin Durant who is more than 15,000 points away from achieving it, and who, at 37 years of age, will hardly play many more years after LeBron’s retirement to be able to achieve it.
In the future, any player would have to average 2,000 points for 25 years to reach the mark. Even reaching the 3,000-point mark (one that, in this era, is more achievable for several volume scorers), one would have to average that over nearly 17 years to catch up to James. Impossible.
Let’s add to that the 21 selections to the All-Star Game, the most playoff games played in history, averaging 25 points per game in 20 consecutive seasons, the most games played in NBA history scoring at least one point, and countless more marks in the regular season, playoffs and NBA Finals, among others.
Extreme longevity in the “load management” era
From the beginning of LeBron’s career, the extreme care that the player gave to his body to perform at his best on the court stood out. It was said at the time that LeBron invested more than a million dollars a year in taking care of his body at the beginning of his career. Today, James himself admits that number is higher. It is important to mention that James began his career in a much more physical and close era, where mid-range shooting and fights in the paint to get baskets were the norm.
Already in the second half of his career, contact and hard fouls have been decreasing. Thanks to the Golden State Warriors of Steph Curry and the strategy driven by the Houston Rockets in the era of James Harden, which favors three-point shots, space is everything. But with that, greater athleticism has been required on the part of the players when covering multiple positions on defense and making constant runs to try to surprise on offense.
In the last decade, this extreme change in the style of the game has become the “load management” era, where coaches and stars try to dose the number of minutes and games season by season to avoid injuries and muscle overload, as well as fatigue. The technique has many detractors, especially from an entertainment point of view, since fans who attend the arenas or who watch the matches on television or streaming are not guaranteed to see their favorite stars.
Last season, just James Harden, Devin Booker, Karl-Anthony Towns, Stephen Curry, Nikola Jokic and yes, LeBron James, were the stars who played 70 or more regular season games. Although this season, James started with an injury that kept him off the court for the first month, the fact that this player, who will turn 41 at the end of December, continues to demand this effort, is notable.
Charisma and talent, the face of the NBA
Prior to Magic Johnson and its great sporting rival, Larry Bird The NBA never had stars who had charisma and chemistry beyond the court to connect with the millions of fans who follow the league. Johnson and Bird left their place for Michael Jordan, and he Kobe Bryant and Shaquille O’Neal.
As if it were planned this way by the basketball gods, LeBron appeared just at the moment when the duo of Kobe and Shaq dissipated, and Shaq became the new big star that the league needed. Not only did he continue with the usual scheme of making television commercials and promote iconic products that are associated with the NBA, such as tennis and video games, for example, but he even transformed sporting moments, such as his signing for the Miami Heat in 2010 at a media show.
In 2021, James followed in the footsteps of his childhood idol, Michael Jordan, by being the star of space jam 2 the sequel to the film that Jordan made in 1996. At more than 40 years old, he continues to be a figure that represents the league and the sport itself on a large scale. While his retirement seems closer, today the next star who translates his talent and fame on the court into a leading role outside of it has yet to appear.
That is to say, even 23 years after starting his career, LeBron James continues to be the NBA’s benchmark on and off the court. A living legend whose excellence seems so mundane to us that sometimes we have to remind ourselves of how special it is to coincide with him in this era.
