A baby born on the last day that LeBron James scored single-digit points in a regular season NBA game would be an adult today. It has been nearly 19 years since James was last held below 10 points in the regular season, the last such occasion coming on Jan. 5, 2007. That’s a stretch of 1,297 total games. But when the final buzzer sounded between the Los Angeles Lakers and Toronto Raptors on Thursday, James had only eight points. The mythical streak had finally, amazingly, come to an end.
And it ended in the most LeBron James-possible fashion. With the score tied at 120 and the final seconds ticking down, Austin Reaves, who finished the game with 44 points, tried to create an opening for a game-winner. When Scottie Barnes crept over to double Reaves, he passed it to a wide open James, who bolted into the lane. A frantic Immanuel Quickley rotated over from the corner to pick him up, which left Rui Hachimura wide open. James did what he’s been doing for even longer than he’s been scoring double-digit points in regular-season games: he made the right basketball play. He passed the ball to Hachimura, who drilled the game-winning 3-pointer, leaving James, who could have attempted his own game-winner to reach 10 points, stranded at eight as time expired.
Throughout his career, James has drawn criticism for making passes just like this. In Game 1 of the 2007 Eastern Conference finals, he made a similar pass to Donyell Marshall in the final seconds, but he missed the possible game-winning 3-pointer and the Cavaliers lost by two. In Game 5 of the 2020 NBA Finals, James could have won the championship with his own final shot. He passed the ball to Danny Green instead, who also missed. His critics, many of whom love to point out how eager players like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant are to take game-ending shots, yelled that as the star, he should have been responsible for scoring those final, critical points.
But James has never been wired like Jordan or Bryant. He always makes the right basketball play, even if that play means giving the ball to someone else. It can come in the first quarter of a random game. It can come with the title on the line. It can even cost him one of his most legendary streaks. But James is always going to make the play he believes gives his team the best chance to win. He did that on Thursday, and it paid off for the Lakers. James never doubted the process.
“You always make the right play,” James explained after the game. “That’s just been my M.O. That’s how I was taught the game. I’ve done that my whole career. There’s not even one second guessing that. Once they doubled AR and the ball got swung to me, I know it’s a numbers game. We’ve got a 4-on-3 advantage. I was just trying to put the ball on time, on target in Rui’s socket, in his shot pocket, and he knocked it down.”
That attitude is going to serve the Lakers well this season. James is now 41 years old. Through his first five games this season, he was already averaging a career-low 15.2 points per game. James has tended to start seasons slowly as a Laker, but there’s a pretty noticeable difference this season as he’s worked his way back from sciatica. The player who is used to controlling every aspect of his team’s offense is clearly struggling to get up to speed. James already had one streak scare on Monday against the Phoenix Suns. He finished the loss with exactly 10 points, and he needed 31 minutes to get them.
But the Lakers don’t need James scoring at the volume that he typically has. Reaves and Luka Dončić entered Thursday’s game averaging a combined 63.4 points per game, the most ever by a post-merger pair of teammates. The Lakers have more than enough scoring.
What they need is for James to fit in. To play hard on defense, get rebounds and make the smart pass. He did all of that on Thursday. Case in point: he may not have reached double digit points, but he got to 11 assists in a victory. That has always been his preference, and it’s what’s going to make him a valuable player even as age leads to inevitable decline. James isn’t as fast as he used to be. He may not be able to jump as high or play quite as hard on a possession-by-possession basis. But he’s a pathologically unselfish basketball genius, and that’s the sort of player that every team could benefit from.