On Tuesday night, Deandre Ayton received his second-ever alley-oop from LeBron James. The first, Ayton said in press after the Lakers’ 140-126 win over the Utah Jazz, occurred when he was in eighth grade, at James’s youth camp in Las Vegas. “He was court-hopping, playing with the campers,” the 27-year-old big man remembered. “The one play, him in the drill with me, he threw the alley-oop and I finished it. I couldn’t believe he threw it. Here I am again: I can’t believe he threw the lob.”
James made his season debut on Tuesday after missing the Lakers’ first 14 games with sciatica. To contextualize just how unusual that was, the 40-year-old James shared some of his own childhood memories: “This is the first time I’ve started a basketball season and not played since I’ve started playing basketball, like 9 years old.” Last week, he spent a few practices with the team’s G-League affiliate while the Lakers were on the road. After getting through back-to-back practices pain-free, James returned to his actual team’s practice on Monday and introduced himself as a “new player.” After that Monday practice, he said his lungs felt like those of a “newborn baby,” and he administered himself “tea and rest.” Regardless, he was cleared to begin season 23.
For basketball fans who have grown up with LeBron James—a huge chunk of NBA viewership, at this point—those opening minutes of the season might have offered an uncomfortable reminder of our own mortality. He went 11 minutes into the game without scoring. It wasn’t until halfway through the second quarter that he attempted a two-point field goal; he only hit one four minutes into the third quarter. Were you fidgeting on the sofa and researching a life insurance policy? “As the game went on, my wind got a lot better. Caught my second wind, caught my third wind,” James said afterward. Maybe it was on that third wind that he began to cook.
LeBron James’s style of cooking looks different now. It was always a fun exercise, even in the prime of his career, to imagine how late-period LeBron might play basketball. Of course, he kept playing like mid-period LeBron long enough to fend off that hypothetical for years, barreling at the rim one season after another, but last night, I felt like we were finally getting some answers. This Lakers roster has two top-shelf pick-and-roll operators in Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. Rui Hachimura has thrived in their midst, putting up an absurd 67 percent on true shooting, and Ayton is a serviceable rim finisher. Despite the Lakers’ middling net rating, intermittent Reaves-Doncic hero ball was enough for the Lakers to get off to a 10-4 start without James.
Where does Old Man Bron fit into that roster, now that he can no longer face up the way he used to? Sometimes he can function as a spot-up shooter from three. But while shooting prolonged his career and kept him up with the times, that was never the essential joy of watching LeBron, nor was it the edge he had on anyone who ever touched a basketball: instantaneously spotting and exploiting the gaps in a defense. I suspect that his on-court future looks instead like the tail end of this game: a burly back-to-the-basket playmaker, causing panic every time he catches the ball in the high post. His mind can take over where his body has relented. James threw a variety pack of dimes as the Lakers broke away from the Jazz in the fourth quarter—crosscourt missiles, spoon-feeds at the rim. He finished with 11 points and 12 assists. As he becomes increasingly ground-bound and energy-conscious, I hope that his play style converges with that of 30-year-old Nuggets point-center Nikola Jokic.
So long as LeBron James keeps hooping, we can all remain in denial of our own aging. He can still keep saying stuff like this, about sciatica, because it’s going to be increasingly relatable for the fans who have tracked his every feat since Akron: “If you ain’t never had it, and people are making jokes about it, I pray you never get it,” James said. “It’s not fun.” If you’re looking for another token of the passage of time, recall that one of his teammates, recently chastised by the head coach for reluctance to shoot the ball, is his adult son.
