LeBron James goes to the 24th season in the NBA at 41

LeBron James will start at age 41 for the 24th season in the U.S. League of Basketball (NBA), in search of a fifth title, at a time 2026/27 in which he will represent a fourth team, the Philadelphia 76ers.

After passages through Cleveland Cavaliers, in a double dose (2003/04 to 2009/10 and 2014/15 to 2017/18), Miami Heat (2010/11 to 2023/14) and Los Angeles Lakers (2018/19 to 2025/26), where he has been for the last eight years, LeBron headed for the Sixers, who assembled a team to fight for the title.

Best scorer in the history of the competition, both in regular season (43,440 points) and in the play-offs (8.521), the American extreme joins Jaylen Brown (ex-Boston Celtics), Joel Embiid, Tyrese Maxey or VJ Edgecome, to form a ‘five’ that imposes a lot of respect.

LeBron’s ambition will certainly be the fifth ‘ring’, to repeat in Philadelphia what he achieved in the previous three teams: he won two by the Heat (2011/12 and 2012/13), one by the ‘Cavs’ (2015/16) and another by the Lakers (2019/20).

At a time when it will be the 42nd anniversary, the ‘23’ reaches the Sixers to win again, at a time when it is no longer a dominant player, but it still seems to have been able to be important, taking into account what it did in the eighth season in LA.

In 2025/26, in the 23rd season in the NBA, LeBron James achieved averages of 20.9 points, 7.2 assists and 6.1 points at the regular time, in 33.2 minutes, having participated in 60 of 82 games.

“I didn’t leave my family to lose in the second round (play-offs),” said the three Olympic champion (2008, 2012 and 2024), in the NBA’s ‘media day’, pointing to a sceptre that the Sixers haven’t conquered for more than 40 years, more precisely since 1982/83.

The new number 23, which played 1,622 games in the regular season and 302 in the play-offs, for a total of 1,924, all records of the race, go in search of strengthening a unique legacy, which began to write since the premiere, 23 years ago, in 2003/04.

Chosen with number 1 of the 2003 draft by the Cleveland Cavaliers, LeBron showed in the first season why all the expectation that generated his entry into the NBA, with averages of 20.9 points – equal to that of the last season -, 5.9 assists and 5.5 caveats, to be elected the ‘rookie of the year’.

By the ‘Cavs’, he was then the best marker of the race in 2007/08 (mean of 30.0 points), a title that never replicated, and ‘Most Valuable Player’ of the regular season in 2008/09 and 2009/10.

Individually, everything smiled at him, but collectively, he did not get the desired ‘ring’ in the first seven seasons, being that he was relatively close in 2006/07, when he reached the final of the ‘play-offs’, lost to the San Antonio Spurs (0-4).

The will to win made him abandon his Cleveland – born in the state of Ohio, Akron – and, after announcing with ‘pomp and circumstance’ – ‘The Decision’ –, head to Miami Heat, to form a very strong trio with Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh.

The Heat failed the title in 2010/11, falling in the final with some surprise before the Dallas Mavericks (2-4), but won in the following two years (2011/12 and 2012/13), with LeBron as MVP of the regular phase and the ‘finals’ on both occasions.

In 2013/14, he returned to the final, in search of the ‘three-peat’, but the San Antonio Spurs (4-1) did not allow him, in what turned out to be the farewell to the Heat, after four seasons, and the return to the ‘Cavs’, towards the dream of winning at ‘home’.

In the first season (2014/15), he returned to the ‘finals’, to lose by 4-2 with the Golden State Warriors, but in 2015/16, in his ninth season in the team, he even got the scepter, in a sensational 4-3 to the Warriors: “Cleveland, this is for you”, he cried.

There were still two more seasons in the ‘Cavs’, to add two more losses in the finals with the Golden State set, before choosing a new challenge: in 2018/19, he moved to California, to the ‘giants’ Los Angeles Lakers.

As in Miami and in the second passage in Cleveland, he was champion in the second season (2019/20), in the middle of the covid-19 pandemic, in a final phase of the competition played at Orlando’s ‘bubble’ in Florida, more precisely at Walt Disney World.

LeBron, who at that time was the leader in the assists, served six more seasons in the Los Angeles group, at a time when he became the best scorer in the history of the competition and won the first NBA Cup in 2023/24.

After eight years, the 13 times member of the first NBA team and 22 times ‘All Star’ returns to the East, in a two-year contract, for the $8 million ‘trachincha’.

If tradition continues, ‘only’ will win in 2027/28, but LeBron James will want to break it and, this time, triumph in the first season and reach the fifth ‘ring’, becoming one of Michael Jordan, the best in basketball history.