Two months out from his 38th birthday, 19 days since setting the NBA’s all-time scoring record, and a week from a record-tying 19th All-Star appearance, LeBron James’ career is still in full swing. But his latest injury setback is a reminder that Father Time is undefeated.
James has been dealing with a right foot injury that will likely sideline him for “an extended period of time” (multiple weeks even), a significant blow for the 12th-place Lakers who had been showing signs of life, winning four of their five games since an active trade deadline.
Relative to the rest of his remarkably durable career, James’ tenure in Los Angeles has been plagued by injuries practically from the start. On Christmas 2018, two months removed from his Lakers debut and five days before he turned 34 years old, James strained his groin. His ensuing 17-game absence marked the first significant injury of his career; he had previously never missed more than 13 games in any one season.
Between his groin and knee injuries, James nursed thoracic and abdominal muscle strains, a sore left ankle and a high right ankle sprain. His availability in the days and weeks following Christmas Day and All-Star games has been sporadic at best.
The 2022-23 campaign has been more of a slog for James, whose participation in 47 of the Lakers’ 61 games is a credit to his physical prowess. He reinjured his groin three weeks into this season, returned for three games and reinjured his left ankle three days later. He played through both ailments, averaging 36.5 minutes a night and only occasionally missing a game for a back-to-back, a four-day rest or an illness — until he broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career scoring record against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Feb. 7.
It was then that what had previously been described as “a day-to-day thing” was deemed more serious. James rested his sore left ankle for the next three games, a weeklong reprieve during which Lakers head coach Darvin Ham said an MRI revealed no structural damage and Turner’s Chris Haynes reported, “It’s something that’s been nagging him for a few weeks already, but it gets to points where it just gets unbearable and he plays through it. People that talked to me said he was really struggling with that foot.”
When asked if the Lakers planned to rest James through All-Star weekend, Ham told reporters, “No, I don’t think he’d allow us to do that.” Indeed, James returned for the final game before the break, suggesting his MRI results were “absolutely” a relief and declaring, “My ankle and my foot feels really good right now.”
James played 14 minutes of the All-Star Game, citing a bruised hand for calling it a night at halftime. He played 26 minutes of a blowout win over the depleted defending champion Golden State Warriors in the first game back from the break, and then reinjured his right foot in a comeback victory against the Dallas Mavericks on Sunday. He finished the game, despite telling teammates in the third quarter, “I heard it pop.”
The Athletic’s Shams Charania reported Monday the Lakers were preparing for another extended absence, and in an addendum on Tuesday, ESPN’s Adrian Wojnarowski firmed up the timeline. James will be reevaluated in two weeks, when the 12th-place Lakers will reassess their position in the standings and reportedly determine whether it makes sense to expedite the 38-year-old’s return for a late playoff push.
The rundown of James’ injury history in Los Angeles, where they are now bracing for him to miss at least 26 games for the fourth time in five years, reinforces just how remarkable his 2020 championship really was. The only season in L.A. that he has finished healthy — and the only season the Lakers have won a playoff series in that time — is the one in which a global pandemic forced the NBA into lockdown for four months.
That James can still average 29.5 points, 8.4 rebounds and 6.9 assists a game when he manages to stay on the court at age 38 is equally impressive, but at some point, we have to face the reality that sustaining his greatness for anything close to what it takes to win another championship might be too much to ask.
The Lakers must win 12 of their final 21 games to finish .500 and leapfrog four teams to avoid a win-or-go-home scenario in the play-in tournament, if they even manage to get there. They are 44 games above .500 (+4.4 points per 48 minutes) with James in the lineup over the last five seasons and 26 games below .500 without him (-4.1 points per 48 minutes), including a swing of 12.6 points per 100 possessions this season.
The Lakers’ season is all but over, barring another accelerated return by the aging face of their franchise, and even then their ceiling is sub-championship. As James himself said in May 2021, when he last fought back from a right ankle injury at the end of a regular season, “If I’m not 100% or close to 100%, it don’t matter where we land.” He was right.
It was then we began considering the winnowing gap between James and Father Time. He informed us in that moment, “I don’t think I will ever get back to 100% in my career.” We took that admission with several grains of salt, since he had previously made similar comments on several occasions, only to resume his persistent ascension. Even this past July, James told ESPN’s Dave McMenamin, “I’m 100% healthy.”
Reality tells a different tale. The Lakers are working on a Plan B for the remainder of the season, and the rest of the league is preparing for a life after LeBron.
