Philadelphia 76ers big man Joel Embiid hinted at the notion that Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James isn’t the same player he was a couple years back.
“You look at the talent that the U.S. has, but there’s equal talent on other teams,” Embiid said to the New York Times when asked if there’s any doubt about who will win the gold medal in the 2024 Olympics. “And the talent that’s on the U.S. team, you also got to understand most of those guys are older. The LeBron now is not the LeBron that was a couple of years ago. So it’s a big difference. Everybody would also tell you, and you can see for yourself, the athletic LeBron, dominant that he was a couple of years ago, is not the same that he is now. I think people get fooled by the names on paper. But those names have been built throughout their career, and now they’re older. They’re not what they used to be.”
Embiid might have a point if he is implying that James is not the athlete he was earlier on in his career. After all, James is the oldest active player in the NBA right now at 39 years old and will turn 40 in December.
However, while James may have lost a step or two from an athleticism standpoint, he was still one of the most effective players in the NBA during the 2023-24 campaign.
In the 2023-24 regular season, James appeared in all but 11 of the Lakers’ 82 games and averaged 25.7 points per contest while shooting 54.0 percent from the field and a career-high 41.0 percent from 3-point range. He averaged the 13th-most points per game of any player in the NBA and more than the likes of Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard and Jaylen Brown.
In addition, even with James starring from a scoring perspective during his 21st NBA season, he was arguably equally as impactful as a playmaker for the Lakers. The four-time NBA champion dished out a whopping 8.3 assists per game, which marked the fifth-highest average of any player in the league behind only James Harden, Nikola Jokic, Luka Doncic and Tyrese Haliburton.
To sweeten the deal, in the Lakers’ series against the Denver Nuggets in the first round of the 2024 NBA Playoffs, he remained impressive. The storied franchise lost the best-of-seven series in five games, but James played in every one of those contests and averaged 27.8 points, 8.8 assists, 6.8 rebounds and 2.4 steals per game.
According to James’ numbers during Los Angeles’ 2023-24 season, it’s arguable as to whether or not he’s the same player he was earlier on during his NBA career. But what’s not arguable is that James remains among the NBA’s elite players despite his advanced age.
