So it begins.
Not with a bang, not with a thunderous dunk in a practice scrimmage, but with a carefully worded press release about LeBron James’s ass.
"A little bit of nerve irritation in the glute."
Read that again. That’s the official line. This is the polished, media-trained, corporate-approved way of saying a 40-year-old man, entering his 23rd year of professional basketball, is already feeling the strain before the first preseason game has even been played. Give me a break.
We’re not even one real practice into the J.J. Redick era, and we’re already getting the preseason talking points that are meant to soften the blow for later. When they say they’re "playing the long game with LeBron," what I hear is, "We are bubble-wrapping our most valuable, and most fragile, asset." It’s not strategy; it’s geriatric care.
Let’s be real. This whole "overly-cautious" ramp-up isn't some brilliant new sports science innovation. It's a panic response. Remember last season? The whispers from Dave McMenamin at ESPN that LeBron "overdid it" and was gassed by Christmas? This is the direct result. This is the Lakers front office and LeBron's camp looking at last year's data and realizing, "Oh crap, the warranty is about to expire." So now we get the managed decline, presented as a master plan.
It’s just exhausting. The performance of it all. It reminds me of how we talk about all our aging icons. I was up late the other night, fell down a rabbit hole watching old Top Gear clips and ended up on some show called James May: Our Man in Japan. I found myself googling "how old is James May" because the guy seems to have been a slightly rumpled 55 for about two decades. He just leans into it. There’s no PR team announcing James May has "nerve irritation in his driving foot" before he gets behind the wheel of a Datsun. He just shows up, does his thing, and offcourse looks a bit tired. There's an honesty to it that sports just can't stomach.
This whole Lakers situation is the opposite. It's a bad sign. No, "bad" doesn't cover it—it's the inevitable, slow-motion preamble to the end, and we're all being asked to pretend it's a bold new beginning. Redick’s out there talking about "22 years so far of wear and tear on the body" like he’s discovered some ancient secret. We know. We've all been watching. The man is a medical marvel, but he ain't Benjamin Button.
What does this even mean for the season? Are we going to get weekly glute updates? Will his minutes be determined by a nerve irritation color chart? The team's first preseason game is Friday. He'll probably sit. He'll sit for a few more. Then he'll play 15 minutes and everyone will write articles about how "explosive" he looked.
The whole cycle is just so predictable. And honestly...
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. I’m just some guy with a keyboard, and he's LeBron James, a billionaire athlete who is still, somehow, a top-tier player on the cusp of 41. Maybe this is what it takes. Maybe this obsessive, micromanaged, PR-spun preservation campaign is the only way to squeeze one last drop of greatness out of a legend.
Maybe this is just what the end of an empire looks like. Not a collapse, but a series of carefully managed press releases.
Just Say He's Old
It's okay. We can handle it. This entire song and dance, the "nerve irritation" and the "long game," is an insult to everyone's intelligence. He's an aging superstar. Treat him like one. Don't treat us like idiots who can't see what's right in front of our faces.
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