Year 23: LeBron James put up his rookie scoring average on far better shooting

The 2025-26 season was the first one LeBron James had ever started on the sideline. Sciatica showed up around the start of training camp, ran down the right side of his body, and kept him out of the preseason and the Lakers' first 14 games. He was 40 when the season tipped off without him and 41 by Christmas.

He debuted on November 18 against Utah. Eleven points, 12 assists, three rebounds, 29 minutes, a 140-126 win. It was the 1,563rd regular-season game of his career and his 1,561st start, and it made him the first player to appear in 23 NBA seasons, one clear of Vince Carter.

Then he played 60 games in a row and started every one of them.

The number worth sitting with

Games

60

Points

20.9

Rebounds

6.1

Assists

7.2

Field goal %

51.5

Three-point %

31.7

Minutes

33.2

Twenty point nine is exactly what he averaged as a rookie in 2003-04. The route there looks nothing alike. In Cleveland he needed 18.9 shots a game and made 41.7 percent of them. In Los Angeles he needed 15.3, the fewest attempts per game he has ever taken in a season, and made 51.5 percent.

Most of that came from inside the arc, where he shot 58.6 percent. The three-point line was the one place the season aged him: 1.3 makes on 4.1 attempts, 31.7 percent, the worst full-season rate of his eight years with the Lakers.

What a good night looked like

He finished with 17 double-doubles and three triple-doubles, and the peaks were still recognizable.

• December 20 at the Clippers. 36 points on 28 shots, his season high, in a 103-88 loss.
• January 6 at New Orleans. 30 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, seven free throws without a miss.
• March 18 at Houston. 13-of-14 from the field for 30 points. He missed one shot all game.
• April 5 at Dallas. 30 points and 15 assists, the most he handed out in any game this season, in a 134-128 loss.
• April 10 against Phoenix. 28 points, 12 assists, four steals, plus-27 in a 101-73 win.

The rebounding held up in stretches too. He pulled 15 off the glass twice, against San Antonio on December 10 and at Miami on March 19, the second one attached to 19 points and 10 assists.

He was the third option and it worked

This is the part that changed. Luka Dončić averaged 33.5 points, made All-NBA First Team, and finished fourth in MVP voting. Reaves put up 23.3 a game across 51 appearances. Deandre Ayton shot 67.1 percent from the floor. James spent the year as the connective piece rather than the engine, and the arrangement worked.

Los Angeles finished 53-29, won the Pacific, took the four seed in the West, and went 39-21 in the games he played. The team scored 116.3 a night on 50.2 percent shooting.

The record-book season

On March 21 in Orlando he checked into his 1,612th regular-season game and passed Robert Parish, who had held the games-played record since 1996. Parish took it well.

If anyone is deserving of breaking the iron man record, I would say LeBron James is. Because he takes such good care of himself.

He also picked up his 22nd All-Star selection and crossed 12,000 career assists in the final week of the regular season. He closed year 23 at 43,440 points, 12,095 rebounds and 12,016 assists, and he did not make an All-NBA team. That absence is its own milestone: 2025-26 was the first season since his rookie year that he was left off entirely, ending a run of 21 straight selections.

The playoffs did not go quietly

The Lakers drew Houston in the first round and won it in six. Game 3 is the one people will remember: 29 points, 13 rebounds, 45 minutes in an overtime win in Houston, at 41 years old. He closed the series out with 28 in Game 6.

Then Oklahoma City swept them. Across the ten playoff games James averaged 23.2 points, 6.7 rebounds and 7.3 assists on 45.9 percent shooting, and he logged 38.4 minutes a night, more than anyone else on the roster. In the four losses to the Thunder he scored 27, 23, 19 and 24. The rest of the team could not keep up: Los Angeles scored 102.2 per game in the postseason, 14 points below its regular-season pace.

What the market saw

The chart at the top of this page is the same one on his market page, so you can line the price up against the season yourself. Two dates are worth scrolling to. November 18, when he played his first game and the model got its first real input in seven months. And March 21, the night in Orlando.

Year 24 is the open question. He owns every longevity record worth owning, and he just finished a season where the scoring average said rookie and the shooting percentages said something else entirely.