Yall keep talking about him losing athleticism but he still gets UP with EASE..
His PPG is declining for the 2nd straight year, and with Irving and Love around him...on top of his increasing age, you have to think Lebron will be less of a focal point in the coming years.
I'm not saying he'll drop down to 10 points per game, but it's very conceivable that he gets a lot closer to 20, and maybe a shade under that.
It's very hard to play basketball at 250 pounds for 20 years and NOT have some kind of regression.
Lebron is currently 10th in the league among active players in Minutes Played.
And he's 31.
1. Kevin Garnett (39 years old)
2. Kobe Bryant (37)
3. Tim Duncan (39)
4. Dirk Nowitzki (37)
5. Paul Pierce (38)
6. Vince Carter (39)
7. Joe Johnson (34)
8. Andre Miller (39)
9. Jason Terry (38)
10. Lebron James (31)
How many of those players averaged 20+ PPG in a season from age 32+ ??
Vince Carter did it once.
Dirk Nowitzki did it 3 times.
Kobe Bryant did it 4 times.
That's 8 seasons out of a combined 61 seasons.
Dirk has been blessed with relatively good health.
And Kobe is a high volume shooter (more than Lebron, anyway) and he wound up getting injured. So there's that.
Obviously Lebron has the talent to be every bit as steady as Dirk was. Or as elite was Kobe was.
But I'd bet against it.
If you take Dirk's age 32-36 seasons (5 years), he totaled 7,008 points -- about 1400 points per year.
If you assume that kind of production for Lebron for his next 5 years, that gives him somewhere in the neighborhood of 33,000 points (probably closer to 33,700-ish given what he'll finish with after this season). That would place him 3rd, just ahead of Kobe...but still around 3,000 points behind Malone...and Lebron would be 37 years old with something like 48,000 career minutes played. And that's barring major injury.
You think that's gonna happen?