Lebron suddenly more like the rest of us
As a teenager he represented potential, as teenagers often do. A worldwide advertising campaign proclaimed us all “witnesses,” and what we were witnessing was the evolving nature of possibility.
It wasn’t just that Lebron James did things we hadn’t seen before. A major part of his appeal was the idea that whatever he did next was going to be even more staggering, even more preposterous, even less believable. And even as he kept topping himself, it was unfathomable to consider he’d peaked.
But at some point he did, and he knows now that it already happened. The ex-teenager did what lots of ex-teenagers do, which is wake up one day and realize he had to not only recalibrate his expectations but make an admission.
“I know getting back to 100 percent is impossible,” James told reporters last week. “I’ll never get back to 100 percent in my career.”
This was less an assessment of the seriousness of an ankle injury than it was a comment on the realities of aging. In this way, the Los Angeles Lakers superstar rarely has been more relatable.
One need not be a global phenomenon to be thunderstruck by the sudden understanding that those mile-by-mile running splits never are going to get any smaller, or that those drives off the tee never are going to get any longer, or that those lost inches of vertical leap off the YMCA basketball court never are coming back.
At some point for everybody it becomes less about setting
new records and more about slowing the inevitable decline.
In acknowledging that “getting back to 100 percent is impossible,” one might be referring in a macro sense to a world’s recovery from any given woe, or in a medium sense to a South Texas basketball franchise’s efforts to return to its five-championship heyday, or in a micro sense to one person’s battle with a balky knee, or a stiff shoulder, or fading vision.
“A man’s got to know his limitations,” a big-screen cop named Dirty Harry once said, and James is far from the first to find the wisdom in that.
At age 36, he’s not going to win another NBA Most Valuable Player award. If his Lakers don’t halt a recent slide that has thrust them to the brink of the Western Conference’s play-in tournament, he might not even make the playoffs the year after winning a title.
ESPN reported Tuesday that James — whose injured ankle sidelined him for six weeks before an abbreviated two-game comeback — will be held out of two more games this week as a precaution.
The ankle probably will get better. James isn’t likely to be limping on the thing for life. But what he meant last week was that by the time one ailment is healed, the chances are good that another one will have arisen, and that even on those rare mornings when he’ll wake up without any specific body part creaking, the whole thing won’t work quite like it did last year, or the last decade.
In other words, he has to redefine what “100 percent” means, because if it is a reference to the most athletically superior condition he’s ever been in, he’ll never get there again. This is not unlike the cold truth facing a franchise like the Spurs, who like James are cursed with the knowledge that they once were the best at something, but might not ever be again.
Starting now, they can do everything exactly right. They can make the correct draft pick every year for the next decade. They can sign the right free agent every offseason. They can extend the right contracts of their current players, and they can pick the perfect coach to replace Gregg Popovich.
Do all of that, and it still won’t guarantee they’ll match their own peak. They still won’t have four future Hall of Famers at the same time, because almost no team ever does. They still won’t be what they once were for 20 years, because how can anybody be that fortunate twice?
So, like James, they’ll have to set a different goal. Instead of assembling a dynasty, they can gear toward a deep postseason run or two. Instead of perfect health, James can aim for running without pain. Instead of a 300-yard drive, the weekend golfer can try to keep it straight and sink a putt. Instead of beating a defender off the dribble, the old man at the YMCA finally can discover the joys of making a decent backdoor pass.
And if none of them ever see 100 percent again?
They might see that can represent potential, too.