LeBron James has built a career on defying age, but, for all his accomplishments, his most enduring habit eventually met its end on an otherwise routine December night late last week. In Toronto, a city he utterly ruled in his prime, the streak that he had going for nearly 19 years finally snapped; in making just four of 17 tries from the field, he finished a bucket short of the double-digit mark he had hitherto hit in 1,297 straight regular-season games.
To be sure, the run has long since drifted into the realm of the surreal, a testament not just to James’ scoring talent but to his durability, routine, and reliability the league no longer sees for a variety of reasons. And yet, not without irony, the conclusion unfolded without ceremony, tucked inside an otherwise-meaningless game the Lakers managed to steal at the buzzer. If the moment stood out all the same, it was in the way the all-time great did not labor to play hero and, in the process, keep the streak alive. Instead, with the score tied and the Raptors bracing for his move, he made the pass to deliver the only success that mattered to him.
It bears noting that James made a simple read with the same calm he has carried across decades. Rui Hachimura, his beneficiary, then launched a corner three that fell through as time expired. In his post-mortem, he brushed off the significance of the development with characteristic restraint. The win mattered. The end of his streak did not. And given that he has lived under the weight of figures since he was a teenager, choosing the right play over the symbolic one was, well, inevitable.
To appreciate the streak is to understand how easily it could have been broken at any point. Fragility lurks every time players step onto the court; A rolled ankle, a bad shooting night, an early exit, and just about anything in between is all it takes. That James stretched it long enough to span eras is remarkable in and of itself. He began it against the Bobcats in 2007, when the National Basketball Association may well have been another league and many of today’s stars were still in grade school.
Think about it. Through roster changes, shifting roles, injuries that would have derailed lesser bodies, and the slow march of undefeated Father Time, James put up at least 10 points in every outing. To underscore the untouchable nature of yet another record in his name, pundits need only point out that it would take the sum of the numbers for the next 11 people in the list to surpass his total. And that it ended via a deliberate, selfless choice lends it symmetry. The run was amassed on consistency; its denouement was crafted on control.
If nothing else, the box score (eight markers, 11 dimes) highlights James’ capacity and, yes, predilection to manipulate a contest without needing to puncture the hoop repeatedly. In recent memory, he has eschewed scoring outbursts for orchestration. He continues to dictate pace, engineer angles, and create momentum for others in a manner that rarely shows up in highlight packages. The pass to Hachimura, for instance, was the culmination of an encounter spent reading what the defense offered and, when demanded by the occasion, handing the rock to teammates in better position to make the most of it.
In the final analysis, the record’s value lies less in how long it lasted than in what it showed: a professional getting to work every night with purpose. And, in the same vein, its fall ultimately carries not finality but perspective. Forget about the single-digit production. What will remain in his resume is the long sweep of reliability, which, in a nutshell, is what allowed the streak to exist at all. There are worse ways for a record to end than with a moment that reinforces exactly why it lasted so long.
Anthony L. Cuaycong has been writing Courtside since BusinessWorld introduced a Sports section in 1994. He is a consultant on strategic planning, operations and human resources management, corporate communications, and business development.
