\ud83d\ude2c Rams stumble vs. Falcons<\/a>
\u2b55 Ohio State hunts another title<\/a>
\u26be Andruw Jones\u2019s HOF case<\/a><\/p>\n
If you\u2019re reading this on SI.com, click here to subscribe<\/a> and receive SI:AM directly in your inbox each morning.<\/p>\n LeBron James is set to join another exclusive club. Today is James\u2019s 41st birthday, which means that when the Lakers host the Pistons at 10:30 p.m. ET on NBC, James will become just the 12th player in NBA history<\/a> to appear in a game at age 41 or older.\u00a0<\/p>\n James has been so consistently excellent for the past 23 years that it\u2019s easy to take his presence for granted. But his birthday is a great opportunity to step back and appreciate what he\u2019s doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Playing past age 40 is not unprecedented in the NBA, but no one at that age has performed as well as LeBron has. James played 56 games as a 40-year-old and averaged 23.9 points per game, the most of any 40-year-old ever. He scored at least 20 points in 39 of his 56 games as a 40-year-old, joining Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as one of only three players in NBA history<\/a> with double-digit 20-point games after turning 40.\u00a0<\/p>\n There have been several players who\u2019ve stayed on the court well into their 40s, but none have played as significant a role as James has. The oldest player to play in an NBA game is Nat Hickey, who logged two games for the Providence Steamrollers in 1948, just days before his 46th birthday. (Hickey was the team\u2019s coach, and the Steamrollers finished the season at 6\u201342.) The modern record belongs to Kevin Willis (44 years, 224 days), who played five games for the Mavericks in the final weeks of the 2006\u201307 season. Robert Parish and Vince Carter are the only other players to appear in a game after their 43rd birthday.\u00a0<\/p>\n James is poised to play a much bigger role than any other player his age ever has. He\u2019s averaging 32.9 minutes per game this season and has played at least 31 minutes in 11 of his 14 games. Only six players in NBA history<\/a> have played at least 30 minutes in a game at age 41 or older, and none has done it more than 11 times. If he keeps up his current pace, LeBron is poised to obliterate that record.\u00a0<\/p>\n James remains a productive player, averaging 20.5 points, 6.7 assists and 4.9 rebounds per game this season, but he\u2019s also undeniably showing signs of slowing down. He missed the first 14 games of the season with sciatica (a classic 40-year-old guy injury) and has settled into a supporting role behind Luka Don\u010di\u0107 since his return. James is averaging just 15.2 field goal attempts per game, by far the lowest of his career, and has a career-low usage rate of 26.3% (about two percentage points lower than his rookie season).\u00a0<\/p>\n Playing alongside Don\u010di\u0107 (the current NBA scoring leader) reduces the pressure on James and could serve to extend his career. It\u2019s amazing that LeBron has been as dominant as he has been for so many years, but he needed a teammate like Don\u010di\u0107 to take charge and allow him to catch his breath every once in a while. The thing that makes LeBron special, though, is that a reduced role still means playing 30-plus minutes per game and averaging 20 points for a 23rd year in a row. While Abdul-Jabbar, Parish and Carter went from being superstars in their prime to role players in their 40s, LeBron is still a force to be reckoned with.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kohjiro Kinno\/Sports Illustrated<\/p>\n \u2026 things I saw last night:\u00a0 <\/p>\n
5. Stephon Castle\u2019s alley-oop off the backboard<\/a> to Victor Wembanyama.\u00a0
4. Brad Marchand\u2019s hand-eye coordination<\/a> to deflect the puck out of the air and into the net.\u00a0
3. Jared Verse\u2019s peace sign while returning a blocked field goal for a touchdown<\/a>.\u00a0
2. The all-22 angle of Bijan Robinson\u2019s 93-yard touchdown run<\/a>.\u00a0
1. Brandon Miller\u2019s dunk on top of Kyle Kuzma<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Good morning, I\u2019m Dan Gartland. I\u2019m back from a hectic travel day and ready to dive into some…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":378240,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[355,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-378239","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-nba","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=378239"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/378239\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/378240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=378239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=378239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=378239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}