LeBron James keeps defying age in 56-point show

By Melissa Rohlin
FOX Sports NBA Writer

There has been so much drama for the Lakers this season that their biggest story has gotten buried.

LeBron James is the youngest 37-year-old we've ever seen. 

What that man is doing is incredible. It's beautiful. It's spellbinding. And it has flown under the radar because the Lakers have been the opposite of those adjectives.

On Saturday, James didn't just turn back the hands of time. He shattered the hourglass, proving its irrelevance.

James scored 56 points on 61.3% shooting, including going 6-for-11 from beyond the arc and grabbing 10 rebounds in the Lakers' 124-116 victory over the Golden State Warriors at Crypto.com Arena.  

He became the oldest player with a 55-point, 10-rebound performance. And he joined Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and Jamal Crawford as the fourth player age 37 or older to score at least 50 points in a game.

It was pretty wild.

But what's even wilder is not being discussed nearly enough. What James is doing on a nightly basis should be one of the biggest talking points of the NBA season. But, of course, his brilliance has been overshadowed by his team's profound mediocrity.

James is averaging 28.8 points, his highest output since the 2009-10, season when he was 25 years old. No one his age has ever been in that ballpark. The closest was Karl Malone, who averaged 23.2 points when he was 37 during the 2000-01 season.

But none of that has mattered because the Lakers are seven games below .500 at 28-35. 

It took him scoring 50-plus points for us all to be snapped out of our stupor. Oh, yeah, he's incredible! But the truth is, he has been pretty much every night.

No one seems to notice, though. When Lakers coach Frank Vogel was asked if James isn't getting enough appreciation, he didn't hesitate. 

"100 percent," Vogel said.

James should be taking an auxiliary role in his 19th season. Instead, he has had to scratch his head on a nightly basis and ask what more can he do.

The worst part of it is that he keeps tweaking his game and rising to the occasion, but it still hasn't been good enough. Loss after loss has piled up, despite his Herculean efforts.

It nearly happened Saturday.

Despite James having 40 points with three minutes left in the third quarter against a Warriors team that was missing Draymond Green, the game still went down to the wire. It took him tying his third-highest scoring performance of his career for his team to win.

After the game, James didn't feel happy because of his record-book performance. Instead, he felt relieved.  

"It’s funny, our guys were following me off the floor tonight going into the locker room, and they asked me, ‘How does it feel to score 56?'" James said. "I said, ‘Right now, I don’t give a damn about the 56. I’m just happy we got a win.’ That’s just literally the first thing that came to my mind."

Things are not looking good for the Lakers. They're in ninth in the Western Conference with only 19 games left. At this point, their best shot of making the playoffs is likely by eking their way in through a play-in game.

James' MVP-caliber season is being wasted. Russell Westbrook has been too inconsistent. Anthony Davis has been too banged up. James has been playing out of his mind, but he can't single-handedly will his team to win — at least, not most of the time.

But despite the Lakers being disappointments, James' season still needs to be celebrated. What he's doing is remarkable. And it's no accident.

James tries to sleep 12 hours at night. He's constantly getting treatment. He submerges his body in cold tubs. He stretches. He eats right. And that's only the tip of the iceberg.

"A lot of people don’t see what I do," he said. "I mean, I get to the arena five hours before the game, so I’m prepping, both mentally, physically, spiritually, everything."

Sure, James isn't getting enough credit because the Lakers are so bad. But he also isn't getting enough credit because he can do it all — and he has been for so long. We've become inured to his greatness.

James has always adjusted to do whatever his team needs.

When the Lakers wanted him to play point guard for the first time in his career in 2019-20, he led the league in assists with 10.2. When they needed him to use his brawn down low, he did that. When they needed him to take 3s, he did that.

His ability to be a chameleon of sorts is what has allowed him to stay atop the league for so long. He has seen it shift from being paint-dominant to being about passing and cutting to being pick-and-roll centered to Stephen Curry turning the league on its head and making it about the 3-ball.

"If you cannot have a growth mindset on how you can find ways to get better with the team, then you’ll get left behind," James said.

On Saturday, when nobody seemed to be able to put the ball through the basket for the Lakers, James knew he needed to be a scorer first.

Ironically, an episode of Uninterrupted's "The Shop" had just aired in which James acknowledged that it "pisses me off" that he's not talked about as one of the best scorers of all time, despite his being third in league history in points scored.

But James never looks for his shot first. 

"My little league coaches always just taught us the right way to play the game of basketball," James said. "The word ‘ball hog’ was something that we despised and we never let creep into our ball club’s view. It’s something we never wanted to do. I guess it just stuck with me, man."

But at this point, all bets are off. James is willing to do anything and everything to try to keep his team afloat, even if it means scoring 50-plus points at an age when most players have become irrelevant.

James seems to only be getting better with age. He's the finest of fine wines. And that needs to be acknowledged.

Even though the Lakers stink, and even though we're used to James being the greatest player in the world, we can't forget that what we're seeing is historic.

James keeps defying the odds, even if everyone around him can no longer see it. 

Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.