Now a 12-year veteran and 30 years old as the Cavs open up the first round against the Boston Celtics on Sunday, James isn’t the exact same guy who made that memorable postseason debut. He played a career-low 36.1 minutes per game this season, missed a career-high 13 games because of rest and injury, while averaging his least amount of points (25.3) and rebounds (6.0) per game since his rookie season.
Then again, he’s not that far off, either.
James will most likely finish in the top five in MVP voting for 2014-15, marking the 10th straight season he will have done so. He will tie Bill Russell for the second-longest such streak in league history, putting him only behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was voted in the top five for the league’s most coveted individual honor for 12 straight seasons from 1969-70 to 1980-81.
And any talk about his body betraying him or his athleticism beginning to atrophy must take into account that he finished eighth in the league with a PER of 26.01 (making him the oldest player to rank in the top 10 and the only player in that group, other than Chris Paul, older than 27 to do so) and was 16th in the league in total dunks with 88 (more than Blake Griffin‘s 84 and Andrew Wiggins‘ 79).
“I do know one thing that Father Time is undefeated, but right now I’m not facing that wall,” James said. “I’m just going to try to maximize my career, maximize what I can do individually and for my team as long as I got the opportunity to do it.”
While 11 of the 13 teammates James had for that initial playoff run back in ’06 are now out of the league (only injured center Anderson Varejao, who is still with Cleveland, and Washington reserve big man Drew Gooden remain, while another, Damon Jones, is still around, albeit as a player development coach for the Cavs), he has a new supporting cast headlined by the 23-year-old Kyrie Irving and the 26-year-old Kevin Love that could help bring him even greater postseason success than he had in his early 20s.
“I’m very excited with the position that we’re in,” James said. “I’m never pleased. I can never be pleased until the end result. And I’m never satisfied. I demand excellence out of myself. I demand excellence out of the people around me. And so, I think the process is still going to be a long process even though we’re in the position that we’re in today.”