At some point, the superlatives stop landing. You read that LeBron James has broken another record, or logged another near triple-double, or carried the Lakers to another win at 41 years old, and some part of your brain just files it away with the rest of the catalogue. That is a mistake. It is worth slowing down and actually looking at what is happening, because nothing in the history of professional basketball looks like this.
LeBron James is in his 22nd NBA season. He turned 41 in December. He is shooting 51.2% from the field, averaging just under 21 points, seven assists, and six rebounds a game, and playing for a Lakers team sitting at 46-25 in the Western Conference. He is not a rotation piece hanging on for one more payday. He is, on most nights, the most important player on a legitimate contender. The records are almost beside the point now. The story is the fact that the story is still going.
LeBron, the GOAT, thank you for your service
Numbers don’t say – that’s my favourite saying
Through 53 games in 2025-26, LeBron is averaging 20.9 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 6.9 assists per game, shooting 51.2% from the floor. Those are not numbers for a player doing enough to stay relevant. Those are numbers for a player who, on any given night, can still be the best on the court.
Earlier this month, he became the NBA’s all-time leader in career field goals made, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 15,837, doing it on a fadeaway that he has been practising since before half the current league was born. He has already passed the 43,000 regular season point mark, and remains the only player in NBA history to have crossed 40,000. These are not incremental records. They are a category of achievement that only exists because he created it.
Before the season ends, he is also poised to pass Robert Parish for the most regular-season games played in NBA history, a record that has stood since 1996, which was, for context, three years before LeBron started high school.
LeBron James & Stephen Curry making history!🎯
— 365Scores (@365Scores) January 3, 2025
King James 👑 ties the GOAT 🐐 for most 30-point games in NBA history! 562 and counting…🔥 pic.twitter.com/WydBtrF7bY
It wasn’t always meant to happen…
LeBron missed the Lakers’ first 14 games of the season due to sciatica, and there was genuine uncertainty about how he would return. Sciatica is not a soft-tissue tweak. It is a nerve condition that runs from the lower back down the leg, the kind of injury that has ended careers or permanently altered movement patterns in athletes far younger than 41.
He came back, making his season debut on November 18 in a 140-126 win over the Utah Jazz. Since then, he has missed only four games. The body that he has reportedly invested more than a million dollars per year maintaining, through personal chefs, cryotherapy, hyperbaric chambers, and daily recovery protocols, has largely held up. You do not need to romanticise the commitment to appreciate what it produces.
As recently as March 26, he put up 23 points, nine rebounds, and nine assists in a 137-130 win over the Indiana Pacers, flirting with a triple-double in his late thirties… sorry, his early forties.
According to reports, LeBron James won’t continue with the Lakers after this season and two new pathways have opened up for King James. ANOTHER comeback to the Cavs or a short stint with the Warriors! pic.twitter.com/RxAlvWA3CM
— 365Scores (@365Scores) March 24, 2026
This LeBron guy is TOO durable
What often gets missed in conversations about LeBron is that durability at elite level is not passive. It is not simply avoiding bad luck. At 41, most athletes who entered the league in 2003 have been retired for over a decade. The physical demands of 22 NBA seasons, of 1,600-plus regular season games, of ten Finals appearances, should have left more visible wreckage.
In February 2025, he became the oldest player in NBA history to score 40 or more points in a game, dropping 42 on the Golden State Warriors. The record belonged to someone else and then, one midwinter night, it did not. He also surpassed Michael Jordan for the most 30-point regular season games in NBA history, a record that few people even knew was being chased until it was gone.
The physical decline is real, and it would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. His three-point shooting is down, his minutes are managed, and there are nights when he plays within himself in ways he simply did not at 28. But the basketball intelligence, the positional sense, the feel for a game’s rhythm, those things have not eroded. In some ways they have deepened. He is slower to create off the dribble and compensates by reading defences a half-second earlier than anyone else. That is not a workaround. That is evolution.
LeBron and the GOAT conversation in 2026
The greatest of all time debate has always generated more heat than light, but the statistical case for LeBron has become almost impossible to argue against on volume alone. He holds four NBA championships, four MVP awards, four Finals MVP awards, and has been selected for 22 All-Star Games. He ranks fourth in career assists and sixth in career steals. He is the all-time points leader by a margin that will only grow.
On March 4, 2025, he became the first player in NBA history to pass 50,000 career points across the regular season and playoffs. The number is almost abstract, but the arithmetic is simple enough: no one else has ever been this good for this long.
Michael Jordan’s legacy rests on a perfect six-for-six in the Finals, two three-peats, and an aura that shaped the sport’s commercial identity for thirty years. That argument does not disappear. But LeBron has done things across a longer timeline and at a greater level of statistical completeness that Jordan simply never had to attempt.
What’s next for LeBron
With his contract expiring at the end of the 2025-26 season, speculation about his future has been a background hum all year. He has exercised his player option for this season and has made no announcements about what comes after. A 24th season, at 42, would break yet another barrier. A championship run this spring would make the retirement conversation considerably harder to have.
The Lakers sit at 46-25, well positioned in the Western Conference. LeBron now plays alongside Luka Doncic, a partnership assembled mid-season through a blockbuster trade that reset the franchise’s horizon. The combination of Doncic’s creation and LeBron’s gravity creates a defensive problem that few teams are equipped to solve. Whether it is enough to go all the way remains open. But the platform is there.
At 41, in his 22nd season, averaging a 21-6-7, owning the all-time scoring record, the all-time field goals record, and the all-time games record almost within reach, LeBron James is not winding down. He is just still playing basketball, at a level that makes every season his last a harder call to make.
FAQs
How old is LeBron James?
LeBron James turned 41 on December 30, 2025. He is currently in his 22nd NBA season.
What are LeBron James’s stats in the 2025-26 season?
Through 53 games, LeBron is averaging 20.9 points, 6.0 rebounds, and 6.9 assists per game, shooting 51.2% from the field.
Is LeBron James the NBA’s all-time leading scorer?
Yes. LeBron passed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in 2023 and is the first player in NBA history to reach 40,000 regular season points. He is also the first to surpass 50,000 combined regular season and playoff points.
What records has LeBron broken in 2025-26?
This season, LeBron became the NBA’s all-time leader in career field goals made, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 15,837. He is also on the verge of becoming the all-time leader in regular season games played.
Has LeBron James retired?
No. As of March 2026, LeBron has made no announcement regarding retirement. His current contract runs through the end of the 2025-26 season.
How many NBA championships has LeBron James won?
LeBron has won four NBA championships, with Cleveland (2016), Miami (2012, 2013), and the Los Angeles Lakers (2020).
Who does LeBron James play with at the Lakers?
LeBron currently plays alongside Luka Doncic, who joined the Lakers in a blockbuster trade during the 2024-25 season.
By Nicky Helfgott / @NickyHelfgott1 on Twitter (X)
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