It’s Christmas Day and a scrum of journalists surround a smiling, exhausted LeBron James in the visiting locker room at Chase Center in San Francisco, minutes after the latest installment in a decades-spanning catalog of thrilling battles with his friend and foe, Stephen Curry. James is asked, in light of all the recent hand-wringing about the state of the NBA as an entertainment product, what he thinks the “good stuff” is in the league on a given night. “LeBron and Steph”, he shoots back, grinning. And he’s not wrong. But it’s just a few days out from 30 December, which marks his 40th birthday, and the quadragenarian elephant in the room casts a somewhat melancholy shadow over the joy of the high-level basketball being played. No one, maybe not even James, knows exactly how much time is left in his illustrious NBA career. But it isn’t much.
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Since his return from a still-mysterious nine-day excused absence from the Lakers a few weeks ago, James has been playing that aforementioned high-level basketball again following a rocky spell in the beginning of the season. For maybe the first time of note, James showed flashes of true, marked decline during that stretch, putting forth his worst shooting numbers since his rookie season more than two decades ago. His recent return to form calls into question if that regression was less of a bellwether and more of an aberration, perhaps brought forth by fatigue after a summer of intense (and wildly entertaining) Olympic play en route to his third gold medal. But fluke or not, it did shine a light on a topic that has been ominously hanging over every step of James’ trajectory over the last few seasons: his imminent retirement, which he has alluded to coming sooner rather than later on several occasions, and the cavernous, face-of-the-league-sized hole that will be left in his wake whenever he does decide to hang it up.
Even Curry, who at 36 is a few years James’ junior, has been reckoning with his basketball mortality of late. He told ESPN’s Malika Andrews in a recent sit-down that he’s thought about retirement recently “more than I probably have before”.
He went on to tell Andrews, “It’s OK to accept and acknowledge that the end is near, but only because it allows you to enjoy what’s happening right now. But I think the more you talk about it, and the more you acknowledge it, the more it levels up the sense of urgency in the moment.”
On balance, both Curry and James are still playing at a top 15-20 player level, as evidenced by their Christmas showdown. But the clock is ticking. If James does come back to play another season next year, there is loud speculation that it will be his last, and his then 23 seasons will mark the most in NBA history, passing Vince Carter’s 22 seasons for most ever played. From the fan perspective, there is obviously difficulty in trying to balance gratitude for the time on the hardwood that remains for their favorite stars with the impending dread of losing them. And for the stars themselves, an even more difficult balance and an age old question: when to hold on, and when to let go?
I asked James’ coach, JJ Redick, a one-time NBA sharpshooter with a formidable playing resume of his own, when he knew it was time to hang it up, and how difficult that was, what with basketball comprising such a large portion of his identity. He recalled a couple of moments in particular where it started to sink in that the end was encroaching.
The first, on New Year’s Eve of what would be his last year in the league, in Dallas, lonely and missing his family (who stayed back in New York City for the season). “[I remember] calling my parents and just being emotional, and talking to them and being like ‘I just want to get in my car and drive back to New York,’ and my mom saying ‘Why don’t you?’ and I said: ‘Because I can’t let go.’”
Redick also recalled a different phone call, the one that made him realize it was really time to call it. “The moment I realized it was over, I was in Dallas, and during that season I’d only really seen my family for like four or five days, it was like three different occasions. And one of them was, they came to Dallas, and Rick [Carlisle, then-head coach of the Mavericks] got word that they were in town for the weekend, we had a Saturday-Sunday back-to-back. So I go through shootaround on Saturday and I get back to the apartment, and I’m getting ready to hang out with them. I think we were going to the Science Museum or something. And Rick calls me and he’s like, ‘Hey, I just got wind your family is in town. You’re probably not going to play tonight, and I know you haven’t seen them, why don’t you just take them out to dinner?’ And I said, ‘Rick you’re a real one, I appreciate it,’ hung up the phone, and started crying. I was like, ‘I’m done. If it’s at this point, I’m done.’”
But LeBron James doesn’t want to let it get to that point: he has always made it plain that he doesn’t want to play long past his prime. The future first-ballot-with-a-bullet Hall of Famer doesn’t have interest in hanging on past his welcome, stating on multiple occasions that he doesn’t want to “cheat the game” he loves. But he’s existing in an interesting space, where he’s certainly still far better than most of the league, still capable of beating the best of the best in any given game, but starting to see the faintest writing on the wall. For someone for whom basketball has been, for all intents and purposes, their entire life, it’s an almost impossible question to know when to walk away.
I recently asked James if, amid all the retirement speculation, he’s had a chance to appreciate just how rare it is to be playing at the level he is given his age. “I haven’t,” he said. “It’s just pretty cool that, with the amount of miles I’ve put onto the tires, and the lack of tread that’s left on them, I’m still able to get up and down the highway, and do it at a high level.” He spoke to the level of dedication required, reiterating his previous sentiments on his desire to walk away before any sharp decline: “I think I just try to give everything to the game outside of the game, before the game even starts, if that makes sense. So I arrive five hours before the game and I’m already starting to do all the things to put me in position to be the best I can be when the fans are in here, when the ball is tipped and everyone is going crazy. I’ve been blessed by the man above with some out-of-this-world ability from the beginning, and then I just took full advantage of it. I wasn’t going to disrespect what he’s given me, and we’ll see how long I can do it. But I won’t do it till the wheels fall off. I’ll tell you that. I’m not going to be one of those guys.”
He certainly isn’t “one of those guys” yet. Forty years old looks decidedly different for James than it has for anyone else in NBA history: all of the above factors considered, he’s still averaging 23.5 points, 7.9 rebounds and 9.0 assists this season, an All-Star output by practically any measure. And while he may not be willing to play “until the wheels fall off”, whenever that may be, LeBron James is taking NBA fans on a hell of a ride as he drives into the sunset.
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