The 2022-23 NBA season is almost upon us, but Hot Take SZN is here, and at the end of another eventful offseason we will see how close to the sun we can fly and still stand the swelter of these viewpoints.
Nobody in the history of the NBA has given Father Time as competitive of a game as LeBron James.
Because of James’ longevity and the advancements in sports performance over the course of his 20-year career, we tend to think other superstars will similarly extend their primes into their late 30s. Only, there are thousands of examples from the past two decades of players who enjoyed the same access to training and never cracked 40,000 combined regular-season and playoff minutes, let alone reached James’ 63,174.
Just 66 of more than 4,500 players in NBA history (1.5%) have hit that 40,000 mark. James, Chris Paul and Kevin Durant are among them. Russell Westbrook and James Harden should join them this season. No one made more All-NBA teams than them in the 2010s. All are closer to the end of their careers than the start.
At some point, we have to consider whether their torch is being passed to a new generation before our eyes. What better point than now, when the lineup from last season’s All-NBA first team — Nikola Jokic, Giannis Antetokounmpo, Luka Doncic, Jayson Tatum and Devin Booker — was all 27 years old or younger for the first time since the 1955 roster featured the Fort Wayne Pistons’ Larry Foust as one of four centers.
LeBron James, shattering precedents
James is expected to eclipse Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 33-year-old career scoring record of 38,387 points this season, but Abdul-Jabbar’s 66,297 combined regular-season and playoff minutes have stood as the NBA standard for just as long, and James could hit that mark, too, with good health in his 20th campaign.
What James is doing as he approaches his 38th birthday is beyond unprecedented. In his rearview are the 62,579 minutes Karl Malone retired with as an injury-plagued fourth option on the 2004 Los Angeles Lakers. James has played the same amount of NBA minutes that Abdul-Jabbar had in late March 1988, when he was nearing his 41st birthday and about to embark on the Lakers’ playoff run to the championship. Abdul-Jabbar played 30 minutes per game in the 1988 playoffs, averaging 14.1 points as their fourth option. He returned for one more season, his 20th in the NBA, averaged a career-low 10.1 points and retired in 1989.
It is reasonable to believe James can be…
