LeBron James has dominated in the NBA for nearly two decades at this point and his longevity almost feels surreal. For some context, he is the only player from his 2003 Draft class that is still on an NBA roster, as Carmelo Anthony remains unsigned, and he’s not just hanging on by a thread either.
LeBron is coming off a season where he averaged over 30 points per game as he still remains an absolute terror on offense despite his advanced age. We and the Lakers expect more of the same from a man who is entering his 20th season in the NBA and it just speaks to his greatness that it’s not unrealistic expectations of someone with that much mileage on their body.
LeBron James Drops Truth Bomb On Being A Student Of The Game
Another factor behind LeBron’s sustained level of dominance has been a willingness to learn and improve. In just his second season in the league, he was averaging 27.2 points per game, and by his third; he was putting up over 30 points per game. It would have been easy to just rest on his laurels after becoming so good so early on, but LeBron knew there was still much to improve on, and that remains the case to this day. He was asked recently about how much learning he has to do with new coach Darvin Ham coming in and James had a great response to it.
"It doesn't matter how long you've played this game, the day you think you could stop learning is the day you start going backwards."
— @KingJames ✍️
(via @Lakers)pic.twitter.com/yGni1K8UHs
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) September 30, 2022
“It doesn’t matter how long you’ve played this game, the day you think you could stop learning is the day you start going backwards. So, you know, I’m always trying to figure out ways I can get better and learn from coaches, and new teammates, and life in general. So, every day is a learning experience for me.”
That is some valuable advice to NBA players and really to people from all walks of life in general. The key to being great for a long time is to view every day as a learning experience, as when you stop learning, you start going backward, as LeBron points out.
Darvin Ham has already been blown away by James in the first days of training camp, which was to be expected and Ham’s job will be to ensure that he can get the rest of the roster to play at a high level, as we know what LeBron is going to do. He spoke on an early season starting 5 recently and he’ll be hoping to get off to a fast start in his first head coaching job as the Lakers look to return to the playoffs.
