LeBron James plays Cleveland the day after his 40th birthday. How appropriate.

On By Littum

Father Time, they say, is undefeated. But right now he’s taking quite a beating from a scenic opponent whose talent at times seems never to run out.

LeBron James turned 40 on Monday, and he’s defying age with a stat line in his 22nd NBA season that most players would love to have in year five. Through 31 games, James averaged 24 points, 8 rebounds and 9 assists placing him in the NBA’s top 30 in each category. On top of that, he is shooting 50% from the field. In what counts as a full-circle moment, James, for his first game as a 40-year-old, is expected to suit up for the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night to face the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team that drafted him in 2003 and the team. he helped win a championship in 2016.

James is expected to suit up for the Los Angeles Lakers on Tuesday night to face the Cleveland Cavaliers, the team that drafted him in 2003.

The remarkable thing about James is not only that he is about to join the small group of NBA players who have played for 40 years, but, as USA Today puts it, “James will become the only player in the 40 club , who is also among the 31 youngest players ever to play in the NBA.He started his career with the Cleveland Cavaliers October 29, 200318 years, 303 days old.”

With the exception of the 2003-2004 NBA season — where he was named NBA Rookie of the Year – James has been named an NBA All-Star every season he has played. He broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record for most points scored in the NBA nearly two years ago and is now 2,744 ahead of The Captain. Vince Carter, who retired after 22 seasons, is the only other person to ever play that long in the NBA.

The difference between Carter and James is that Carter wasn’t nearly as potent in his 22nd season. James’ current stats aren’t the kind of numbers we see from players nearing retirement. He himself said as much on his birthday and told the media that he believes in him could play at a high level until he is almost 50.

“To be honest, if I really wanted to, I could probably play this game at a high level for about another – strange that I could say this – but about five or seven more years if I wanted to” said James. “But I won’t do that.”

We don’t know exactly when he will retire, but we can recognize that he is already well into his second act.

A decade ago, when examining the social impact of black athletes, I wrote that James was perhaps the “unique, liberated athlete in all of American professional team sports.” By the time he was 30, he had already had a Hall of Fame career with two NBA championships and three Olympic medals, including two golds. But what really stood out was that with the Black Lives Matter movement in its infancy, James found his voice in social issuesbuild a reputation as a boardroom rainmaker and gain a reputation for evading endorsement deals and instead groundbreaking for a business model where he negotiated equity in the brands that sought his Midas touch.

To be honest, if I really wanted to, I could probably play this game at a high level for another five or seven years. But I have no intention of doing that.”

lebron james about to turn 40 years old

He cultivated relationships with arch-capitalistsincluding television producer Tom Werner and investor Warren Buffet, and used these relationships not only to enrich himself but also to help other athletes of his era set up shop. He took advantage of the NBA’s collectively negotiated free agency rules and showed other players that they could control their own financial and on-court destiny. With LeBron at the helm, everyone—not just billionaire team owners—could eat.

Since then, James won two more NBA championships and turned his equity in the English Premier League’s Liverpool club into part of the team’s corporate owner, Fenway Sports Group. This means that instead of simply owning part of a football team, he has an interest in the company that owns the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins, a NASCAR racing team and a real estate business. Last month, his production company, SpringHill, merged with Fulwell 73, an entertainment company best known for producing “The Kardashians.”

James could have walked away from basketball at any point in the last 10 years and he would still have as much cultural influence as any of today’s emerging business leaders or streaming stars. He would have more cultural influence than almost any American athlete before him, with the possible exceptions of Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.

Kobe Bryant, James’ basketball rival and real-life friend and mentor, was something of a precedent for what is likely to come in James’ post-basketball life. In 2013, while still playing for the Lakers and seven years before his tragic death, Bryant, a five-time NBA champion with connections and vision, created a private equity firm, Bryant-Stibelwhich is still in operation. Also in 2016, Bryant launched a media house, Granity Studios. He set himself up to take advantage of opportunities that even most wealthy athletes can’t play after retirement. It’s terrible that we never got to see it develop.

In LeBron, we may be looking at our second best chance to see what the fulfillment of that dream looks like. But in the meantime, we can still see the prodigy from Akron, Ohio, stay out ahead of Father Time.