A few nights ago, the Los Angeles Lakers played the Houston Rockets in an unassuming regular season game about 3,000 miles away from my dorm room. Even though the NBA season is a quarter of the way through and we’ve reached the point where the initial excitement wears off and the monotonous slog of an 82-game season starts to set in, I still (to the best of my ability) watch every single game LeBron plays. Some find it difficult to understand why I devote so much time and energy to rooting for a player who neither hears my cheers from the opposite side of the country nor knows I exist at all. My response to all of them: you’ve never experienced LeBron James playing basketball.
Let’s get back to the game. There’s a little over a minute left in the second quarter, and the Lakers have built a pretty hefty 15-point lead over an unexpectedly competitive Rockets team. D’Angelo Russell dribbles the ball a few times from well beyond the three-point line before lobbing it to LeBron. At this point, every other Laker on the court is about 25 feet away from the hoop in an attempt to draw out their defenders and clear the way for LeBron to take on Tari Eason one-on-one.
Over the course of five seconds, LeBron simply forces himself towards the basket. He doesn’t use any fancy moves. He doesn’t use any tricks. He just backs up and overpowers Eason with sheer will, all while maintaining a strangely straight posture as if to show us—the audience—just how easy it is for him to shove his way through a 6’8” 215 pound man. Then, within half a second, LeBron lowers his knees and spins to his right so smoothly that Eason is now completely behind him.
So far, what I’m describing is a really standard move, and a predictable one at that. LeBron is, after all, characteristically not in a rush, using six seconds to move just a few feet. To some degree, the defense has to know what’s going to happen. With eight seconds left to shoot, Jeff Green—a tried and true NBA veteran who wears number 32 for the Rockets—sees what’s going to happen and moves closer to the hoop to offer a second line of defense. Since he’s sandwiched between two of Houston’s strongest players, the odds of LeBron scoring on this possession seem infinitesimally small; he isn’t even looking at the basket, his body is awkwardly angled away from it, and every single Rockets player is now looking at him. LeBron sees Jeff Green just before he rises to the rim, but Green times his jump so well that if you pause the game with 1:06 left in the second quarter, you’ll see they’re perfectly aligned in space. You’ll also see that LeBron’s momentum is carrying him slightly clockwise, and that he is about to turn his back to his defender, mid-air. When he does so, Green ricochets off LeBron, who is patient and skilled enough to take his shot in that small window of time just as the top right corner of the white rectangle becomes visible but before he lands on the court. LeBron scored on this play.
If you want a sense of just how impressive this was, look at the reaction from the Lakers’ bench. Some laugh, some just stare, some slowly say “Oh my God,” but they all rise from their seats in complete awe. At one point, the camera turns to Cam Reddish, Jaxson Hayes, and Christian Wood, who all have their hands on their heads, their eyebrows raised, and their mouths open. The Lakers’ bench was given a technical foul for an excessive celebration, and I can’t blame them. Yes, it was an unbelievable display of pure athletic talent, skill, patience, and intelligence. But what makes it even more impressive is the fact that LeBron James is 38 years old, less than a month away from turning 39, and still capable of performing feats like this. It just shouldn’t be possible. To put it into perspective, LeBron is one of six players in NBA history to play 21 seasons, and of those players, he averages the highest number of points per game at nearly 25. The person with the second highest is Vince Carter with just 7.4. And LeBron is somehow having one of the most efficient seasons of his entire career, making a mind-boggling 55% of his shots, including nearly 39% from three, and 70% from the free throw line. He isn’t just consistent. He’s consistently the best.
In fact, he’s been so dominant for so long that you can find old NBA highlights on YouTube where he’s playing against Ime Udoka and Darvin Ham, the respective head coaches for the Rockets and Lakers. He’s been in the league long enough to experience multiple eras of professional basketball, to witness the rise and fall of generational players, to face nine father-son duos, and to play during four different presidential administrations. He’s been an NBA player for my entire life and for more than half of his. He seems to transcend time and physical limitation, crushing any standards we had of players not just in basketball, but in any sport. So, if you ever find yourself watching LeBron play a game this season, try to remember that you are probably watching the most consistently excellent player of all time, and that he is redefining what it means to be an athlete every time he steps on the court.
Oscar Heller was the Opinion desk editor for the 2024-25 school year. He has also been a staff writer. Currently, he is one of the Editors-in-Chief for the 2025-26 school year.
