On May 25, 2015, as LeBron James was tearing through the Eastern Conference on his way to what was then his fifth consecutive trip to the NBA Finals, Twitter user urkle91 issued one of the most infamous basketball-related proclamations in the site's history. "LeBron is 30," he tweeted, "this f---ery won't go on for much longer, thank god." It was a brief message from someone with no apparent ties to the NBA, but after more than 25,000 retweets, it has become an unofficial punching bag to be used whenever James defies Father Time. Since this tweet, James has reached five NBA Finals, won two NBA championships and broken the league's all-time scoring record. It turns out the f---ery could, in fact, go on for much longer.
It's gone on so long, in fact, that the tweet no longer accurately reflects which decade James has aged into. On Monday, James turned 40. For the overwhelming majority of professional basketball players, reaching 40 means that the NBA is in their rearview mirror. Thousands of players have participated in an NBA game at some point. However, if we go by Basketball Reference age (which is as of Jan. 31 in a given season), only 23 players besides James have ever reached their age-40 season in NBA history. It feels appropriate that the group's size would reflect James' uniform number, because he is not only about to break into it, he's going to shatter every 40-plus record in the history of professional basketball.
Before this season, the NBA record for points per game by a player in his 40s was held by, like so many records James has broken, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Abdul-Jabbar.averaged 14.6 points per game in the 1987-88 season. That's an impressive figure in context. After all, he, Karl Malone, Robert Parish and John Stockton are the only players to ever even average double-digit points in their 40s. But James is averaging 23.5, and lest you believe this is simply a matter of 3-point inflation, he is also the 40-plus leader in 2-point field goals per game (seven) and is just slightly off of Malone's record for 40-plus free-throws made per game (James has 3.5, Malone averaged four).
This isn't purely a volume record, either. James, to date, has a true shooting percentage of 58.4%. Technically, that ranks sixth among 40-plus players. However, the two leaders, at a robust 100%, are Udonis Haslem and Joe Johnson, who combined to take three total shots in the seasons in question. Third-place Charles Jones attempted 10. Sure, Dikembe Mutombo, in both the No. 4 and No. 5 slots, did so on reasonable volume, but remember, he was a center at a time when big men rarely ventured outside of the paint. Aside from 37 mid-range attempts across two seasons, all of Mutombo's shots in those seasons came in the paint. James has already scored 242 points outside of the paint this season. Mutombo never scored that many total points in a season in his 40s. In fact, only 15 players have ever reached that total over a full season in their 40s, and we're talking about two months and some change of jump-shooting here. James is doing this from everywhere, and he's doing it efficiently.
And scoring is hardly the only area in which James is still thriving. As of this writing, he remains the leader in 40-plus assists (at nine per game). He ranks second in rebounds (7.9, behind only Malone at 8.7), fifth in steals (0.8) and eighth in blocks (0.6). He's doing all of this with a 29.9% usage rating. Among age-40 players to have played a non-trivial amount of minutes, that makes him the first to ever even cross the 25% threshold. In other words, he's dominating the players in his age range in almost every category while carrying a significantly heavier burden than any of them ever have.
That's going to lead to at least a few historic accolades. Only two players have been named All-Stars in their 40s. We can immediately toss Dirk Nowitzki out because he was chosen ceremonially alongside Dwyane Wade as the 13th All-Star in his conference out of respect for his legendary career. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was chosen twice, but didn't really have a case in either season. Forget about his scoring for a moment; Abdul-Jabbar wasn't even averaging 30 minutes per game by the time he reached his 40s. In his final season, he made the All-Star team on 22.9 minutes per game. It's an All-Star game. There are few "stars" who have ever been bigger than Abdul-Jabbar. But let's not pretend that he was chosen on merit.
James still easily could be. He still ranks in the top 12 in the Western Conference in several catch-all metrics, including PER, Box Plus-Minus and VORP. Bleacher Report's Andy Bailey frequently aggregates seven of the most-used catch-all metrics into one, which he calls Huge Nerd Index. It currently ranks James 24th in the NBA and 12th in the Western Conference, suggesting that James is still playing at an All-Star level even if he's more of a bubble candidate than he was at his peak. James already became the oldest player to reach an All-NBA Team when he did so last season at 39. Coincidentally, he is also tied as the youngest player ever to make an All-NBA Team, which he did at 20. While James has plenty of work to do if he wants to become the first quadragenarian to make an All-NBA Team, it's still on the table for him depending on how the rest of the season plays out.
Sure, James' numbers are likely going to decline the deeper into his 40s he plays. But at least at his point of entry, he is far and away the greatest 40-year-old basketball player of all time. And so, with apologies to urkle91, James isn't just defying the typical NBA age curve, he's completely shattering it.
