LeBron James, who turned 41 years old on Dec. 30, averaged 20.9 points per game last season. Before him, the most points a player had ever averaged at age 41 was 10.1.

James, who signed with the Philadelphia 76ers Monday on a two-year deal worth $8 million, has broken the typical NBA aging curve. In the 2021-22 season, he became the oldest player to ever average at least 30 points per game when he did so after turning 37. He then proceeded to break the record for most points per game by a player at age 38, age 39, age 40 and age 41 over the subsequent four seasons.

Only three players in NBA history have even played significant regular-season minutes at age 42, which James will do this year barring injury. Vince Carter was the most productive, averaging 7.4 points per game in 17.5 minutes for the 2018-19 Atlanta Hawks. Robert Parish averaged 3.9 points in 1995-96, and Kevin Willis averaged 3.0 in 2004-05.

Dikembe Mutombo and Udonis Haslem were both in the NBA at age 42 but barely played (although Haslem memorably scored 24 points in a Game 82 explosion). Kareem Abdul-Jabbar turned 42 just before the end of the 1988-89 regular season and averaged 11.1 points during the 1989 postseason as the Los Angeles Lakers went to the Finals.

That’s it. If James just averages double-digit points during the regular season, he’ll be by far the best scorer ever at his age.

For a more holistic view of his on-court impact, though, we can turn to advanced metrics. DARKO daily plus minus, which uses box score and on-off data to estimate how much a player impacts the score of a game, is updated throughout the season and therefore gives us a window into the trajectory of his level of play.

James’ current DPM is +1.2, which ranks as the 56th-best in the NBA. That’s a big drop-off from the +6.4 DPM he was at prior to the 2021-22 season (No. 3 in the league). In the subsequent four seasons, he entered those years at +5.1 (6th), +4.0 (12th), +4.5 (11th) and +2.4 (26th), respectively.

That’s a clear downward trend, as is expected for any aging athlete, and the decline has been roughly linear. Even if he continues dropping at a similar rate, however, he will still be well above the league average DPM of -0.64 by the end of this season. He would drop significantly down the ranks of NBA players—a DPM of 0.0 would put him around No. 145 on the list, and a DPM of -0.5 places just inside the top 200.

James’ physical decline will continue—if it doesn’t, he’d be the first in human history to buck that trend—but his mental game is as sharp as ever, which is an outsized asset come playoff time. In the 2026 postseason, he averaged 23.2 points, 7.3 assists and 6.7 rebounds and led the Los Angeles Lakers to an upset over the Houston Rockets in the first round. He did so with guile: backdoor cuts, reading opponents’ tendencies and sneaking behind ballhandlers for steals.

What is mind-boggling about James is that he has produced at an unprecedented level both at the end of his career and at the beginning. He broke the record for most points per game as a 41-year-old two decades after he set the record for most points per game as a 21-year-old at 31.4, which still stands.