Over the two-plus decades that LeBron James has occupied our collective consciousness, he has taken on countless forms.
The most obvious is that James, 41, is now on the NBA‘s Mount Rushmore. His career accolades are second-to-none: he’s a 22-time All-Star, a 21-time All-NBA, a four-time NBA MVP, a four-time NBA champion, and a four-time NBA Finals MVP.
On Feb. 7, 2023, James passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. This month, James passed Abdul-Jabbar for the most made field goals, and he just passed Robert Parish for the most regular-season games played in league history. James went 1,297 consecutive regular-season games scoring at least 10 points until Dec. 4, 2025 - yes, another record.
Best, best, best.
Most, most, most.
As James comes down the stretch of his NBA-record 23rd season and likely his last year with the Los Angeles Lakers, the pile of unprecedented statistics and eye-popping dunks buries the true marvel.
Remember the phenomenon of James reading before and after games? In June 2012, Michael Wilbon wrote an entire ESPN feature investigating whether James’ propensity to be photographed with books was a contrived public image or a genuine love for reading. Skepticism persists, but questioning James’ habits seems futile.
San Antonio Spurs supernova Victor Wembanyama, 22, has taken the mantle of the NBA’s Reading Guy. But watching James obliterate preconceived notions about aging greats, I can’t help but wonder if he has “Project Hail Mary” tucked somewhere in his locker.
“Project Hail Mary” is a science fiction novel by Andy Weir. In it, a teacher and former biologist named Ryland Grace wakes up with amnesia aboard a spaceship. He doesn’t know how. He doesn’t know anything. Ryland just knows he has to save the world from mysterious cells infecting the Earth’s sun. Subsequently, human life is unknowingly in peril.
“He believes in people,” Gosling said of Weir while promoting his “Project Hail Mary” movie adaptation on the “New Heights” podcast last week. “He believes in what we’re capable of. He believes that we’re capable of great things. It’s not just unearned optimism. It’s not just optimism for the sake of it. He reminds you, in his work, that all the great innovations in human history started as impossible ideas, and human beings made them possible. We make the impossible possible all the time. It’s kind of our thing.”
Gosling added: “He writes this book that says, ‘No, maybe the future isn’t something to be afraid of; maybe it’s just something to figure out.'”
If only one athlete was tasked with saving humanity from an unidentified pathogen in the universe threatening the sun, I’d probably want Josh “The Passtronaut” Dobbs. But no athlete embodies the central themes better than James.
“Basketball favors the continuous thinker,” Hall of Fame former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski recently said.
Basketball has never had a more continuous force than James. Yes, James is a generational physical specimen. His otherworldly, singular athleticism allows him to keep thunderous dunks in his nightly repertoire north of 40. However, his mind is why he continues to defeat Father Time - an insatiable curiosity, matched only by an all-time basketball IQ and an unwavering commitment to scrupulous study.
How does the player who has already mastered guarding and playing all five positions - the NBA’s preeminent chameleon, as observed by Clair de Lune - find it in him to reinvent again? By believing the end isn’t something to be afraid of, but rather something to figure out.
When the Lakers pulled off the blockbuster to acquire Luka Doncic from the Dallas Mavericks on Feb. 1, 2025, conversations swirled about whether he and James fit together. Doncic has said that he modeled his heliocentric game after James. Maybe on paper it can’t work. At times, it has not worked. But just like Ryland Grace and any great scientist, James is always tinkering.
When James’ left elbow contusion forced him to miss the Lakers’ games on March 6 and March 8, he saw an opportunity to do what he did innumerable times in Cleveland (twice) and with the Miami Heat before arriving in L.A. Read the room and recalculate how to have maximum impact.
“I was out a couple weeks ago, and I was able to come back and see how I fit best with [Dončić and Austin Reaves] because they were playing so dynamic off one another,” James said last week. “But I mean, it sells papers a lot easier and clippings and podcasts if you say their team is better off without LeBron. That’s how a lot of people try to view it, so I get it. They’re absolutely wrong.”
Before losing to the Detroit Pistons on Monday night, the Lakers’ nine-game winning streak propelled Doncic back into the MVP conversation. But “Luka Magic” flourished because James deferred on offense to preserve energy and compensate for what Doncic lacks defensively. Even when he’s out of the play, he’s influencing the play. With 2.6 seconds left against the Orlando Magic on Saturday, James diagramed the game-winning three for Luke Kennard.
“Hopefully, my move to the rim can pull gravity towards me, and it did,” James said afterward. “A couple of guys went with me, and it left Luke wide open. One of the best shooters in the NBA. Just trying to do my job.”
Last Thursday, it would have been logical for James, Doncic, and Reaves to sit on the second night of a back-to-back in Miami. Instead, James posted a triple-double for the second time this season and turned “I’m not tired” into a rallying cry.
“When [LeBron] said he was playing, I was like, I can’t let a 41-year-old play and I not play, so I signed up to play, and so did Luka, and we went and grinded the win out,” Reaves said after the Lakers beat the Heat, per Benjamin Royer.
The streak underscored an embrace of what few, if any, NBA stars have embraced before: James doesn’t have to be the sun around which the whole team orbits. By adapting yet again, James proved he remains the glue that holds everything together.
The Lakers’ 113-10 defeat to Detroit served as a subtle reminder that everything must end. So, too, will James’ illustrious career.
James conquered every basketball mountaintop multiple times. Having experienced nirvana makes it easier to relish in the process, absent from the result.
“Is there anything left for me to accomplish as a basketball player? No,” James said in October 2024. “Everything else is extra credit. I’ll take it, though. I love it.”
“Project Hail Mary” captures a last-ditch effort. James’ final act - his Hail Mary - is devoid of desperation. James chose indulgence where bitter resignation could have lurked. His joy in the face of an inevitable end should be received as a challenge. We cannot become numb to it, either. We are all still witnesses.
It feels impossible, but there will come a day when James stops playing in the NBA - a basketball fan’s version of an imploding sun. When asked by Melissa Rohlin how he would script his career’s end, James said: “Me smiling. That’s the best way I know for sure that I’ve gotten the most out of it.”
Every night he takes the floor, he rewrites the book on what any of us may be capable of.
2026 NEWSWEEK DIGITAL LLC.