The Los Angeles Lakers will begin their second-round matchup in the 2026 NBA Playoffs on Tuesday night, taking on the reigning NBA Champions and No. 1 seed OKC Thunder. The Lakers enter Game 1 as massive underdogs, heading into the series without franchise star Luka Doncic. But the first round proved that the Lakers can continue to rely on 41-year-old LeBron James to lead them to Playoff wins.
LeBron averaged 23.2 points, 7.2 rebounds, and 8.3 assists in six games against the Rockets, looking like the best player on the court despite being in the 23rd season of his historic career. Everyone’s been joking about LeBron’s longevity for the last five years, but nobody assumed it would reach the point where he’s leading the Lakers to a series win as the No. 1 option while being without his biggest co-stars.
On the latest episode of the ‘Mind the Game’ podcast with Steve Nash, LeBron admitted that even he never imagined that he’d lead the Lakers to a Playoff series win at 41 years old when he joined the franchise as a 33-year-old in the summer of 2018.
“I definitely didn’t believe that. I came to the Lakers in 2018 at 33, and there’s no way if someone had said that you’d be playing in 2026 in the postseason. Just playing, I don’t think I’d be able to answer that question, let alone saying that you’re the No. 1 option on that team and leading them to winning a series. I wouldn’t have believed that.”
“I knew I had a lot left in the tank when I came to the franchise in ’18. But to say that eight years later, I’d be leading the team into the postseason, and come out with a series win, I wouldn’t have guessed that or bet on that.”
When LeBron left the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2018 to take his talents to Los Angeles, many assumed this was a glorified retirement tour for the most famous player of his generation on the most famous team in the NBA. It would’ve been fair to assume James would play at least five years when he joined the Lakers, but to reach Year 8 at 41 years old and still be leading the team is an incredible feat.
There is literally no past parallel that we can draw to contextualize what James is doing. He’s the only player in NBA history to play a game in Year 23, let alone make the postseason. On top of that, he led his team to a first-round series win against a talented group of young athletes in Houston while being without both Doncic and Reaves. We literally might never see anything like this again.
James will have Reaves alongside him when they face the Thunder in Game 1 at the Paycom Center in Oklahoma City tonight. Reaves has been available since Game 5 of the first round series against the Rockets. Unfortunately, Doncic will still be out with a hamstring injury he suffered over a month ago against the very opponents the Lakers face in the second round.
Even with Reaves available, the burden of finding a way to beat the Thunder will likely fall on James. If there’s anything we’ve learned from his career is that we can never count him out, even when the odds seem stacked against him. If James somehow leads the Lakers to an upset series win over the Thunder, it might be one of the greatest accomplishments of his career.
