On any given day, in any given barbershop, in any given nook and cranny of the vast expanse of the United States, someone is arguing about who the greatest basketball player of all time is. While it’s a fool’s errand to try and convince someone of the “GOAT,” as it were — and doubly so on the internet — one way or another, the act of attempting doesn’t seem to be going out of fashion any time soon. Central to these arguments, alongside one Michael Jeffrey Jordan, is LeBron James, the quadragenarian “kid from Akron” who is on his way, in all likelihood, to a record 21st All-NBA appearance this year. He’s also still, for now at least, on a quest with Slovenian phenom Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers for his fifth championship ring.
Much has been made of the unprecedented longevity James has shown to get to this point, and it certainly has been used in the LeBron vs. Jordan argument ad nauseam. But one facet that has, in many ways, gone under-discussed when comparing him to any other player of the rarified air he breathes is that LeBron James is not one basketball player. He’s several.
James has approached his NBA career similarly, in some ways, to how Madonna has approached maneuvering the pop music landscape: if you’re constantly evolving, the game can’t pass you by. While much has been made of the hyper-athletic specimen James has been since his nascent NBA career began for his hometown Cleveland Cavaliers, he’s never been satisfied, it seems, with just being one thing. As anything is wont to do given enough time, the NBA and the nature of its game have both changed substantially since he entered the league in 2003. The three-point revolution turned professional basketball on its head, deprioritizing the midrange and paint in favor of outside shooting due to what can be distilled in a simple math equation: three is more points than two. So, in recent years, James honed in on his distance shooting. “I always wanted to have the adaptability and the growth mindset to be able to change with the game,” he told Steve Nash recently on their “Mind the Game” podcast, “where I would still be productive no matter what the game called for.”
He has played and guarded all five positions at some point throughout his long NBA career, and excelled at all of them (even being robbed, some have argued, of the 2013 Defensive Player of the Year trophy that ultimately went to Marc Gasol). That is due, in part, to his unique combination of court vision, basketball IQ, size, and strength. “When you’re 6-8, 250-ish you can set screens, you have the ability to play the five or the power forward position,” Jason Kidd told Fox Sports of James’ versatility in 2023. “But he can play all five [positions], and coach at the same time and help his team win.” Kidd referenced Oscar Robertson and Magic Johnson as other players who had a diverse skill set for their size, but acknowledged that what James can do is, in actuality, just unprecedented. “I think when you talk about LeBron, LeBron’s in his own category.”
This season, as his never-ending evolution continues, LeBron has had to be multiple players in one calendar year. With the Lakers’ offense aiming to be centered around big man Anthony Davis to start the season, much of the facilitation and outside scoring fell in James’ lap. When Davis went down with an adductor strain in January, the task of carrying the team through an important stretch of the schedule as its main source of offense, and the captain of its defense, was taken on by the 40-year-old with no issue. And ultimately, with the shock swap of Davis for Luka Doncic in early February, James had to become something else entirely. The Lakers desperately needed a defensive engine, and someone to generate good offensive looks became substantially less valuable with the arrival of Doncic, one of the best offensive creators and shotmakers in the league.
Suddenly, what the Lakers really lacked was, ironically, an Anthony Davis. So that’s what James became, no questions asked. He led a team that most would agree is sorely lacking in defensive talent to be the No. 1 defense in the league for two months in the wake of the biggest trade in NBA history. To say that a 40-year-old has never done what LeBron is doing this year is understating what is happening: not even LeBron has ever done what LeBron is doing in the post-Davis iteration of the Lakers. He’s fully reinvented himself on the fly, yet again.
Even the Ringer’s Bill Simmons, who has famously been quite critical of James, has taken note of the remarkable shapeshifting. “I don’t know what this version is. And I don’t know if he really knows it either,” Simmons said on a recent podcast. “He’s figured out how to always be involved in the game even if he’s not involved in the play. He’s always moving, he’s always hustling, he’s always using his brain. And [it’s] really cool to watch.”
In Game 3 of the Lakers’ first round bout with the Minnesota Timberwolves, Luka Doncic was sick with a nasty stomach bug, and after a sleepless night of vomiting, almost didn’t make it on the court. While he did ultimately suit up, Doncic looked like a shell of himself. A version of LeBron that hadn’t really been seen since Doncic’s arrival in Los Angeles was needed, another shape shift in his chameleonic oeuvre. And with a scintillating 38 points, 10 rebounds and 4 assists, James turned back the clock and delivered. In Game 4, less than 40 hours later and staring down the barrel of a 3-1 deficit, the Lakers needed James to completely empty the tank, and he obliged: not only did James lead the team in minutes played at 46, resting just under two minutes total in the first half and none in the second of what was an incredibly physical and competitive slugfest. Surrounded by bigger, faster athletes a decade or two his junior, 40-year-old James was, for much of the game, the best defender on the court. While the output in those contests were ultimately in vain, as Minnesota secured victories in both games, James’ performances were emblematic of who he is as a player: whoever his team needs him to be.
“You have to go out and lead by example. And I’m one of those guys where if I’m gonna talk about it, I’m gonna go out there and do it, as well,” James told me after an incredible defensive performance that lifted his Lakers to a 94-85 Game 2 victory in Los Angeles last week. “You can’t ask your teammates, or people who go into battle with you, [to] make sacrifices, to go out there and do the things that you’re not going to do. And I think I’ve kind of always had the mentality that whatever I ask of my guys, whatever I ask of my teammates, they can ask of me. And I’m gonna hold myself accountable.”
Twenty-two years into his professional career, somehow, there still doesn’t really seem to be anything that could be asked of James on a basketball court that he could not do. He may not still have the same burst at forty that he did at twenty, but he’s still one of the most athletic players in the league. His mind, it seems, has only grown sharper. He doesn’t need to be the guy, but make no mistake, he still can be. All of the players he has been to this point are, at any given time, mostly still at his disposal, waiting for the right moment to be deployed. In Game 2 of the Minnesota series, his team needed him to be Draymond Green. In Game 3, they needed a version of James from 10 years ago. In Game 4, they needed Anthony Davis, mixed with some second-stint-in-Cleveland LeBron (complete with a “Blocked by James!” chase down throwback block in the fourth quarter). While it may not prove to be enough to save this year’s ramshackle, built-on-the-fly version of the Lakers, LeBron James is not, it has been borne out, limited to being one single basketball player. And that’s what makes him singular.
