ORLANDO – LeBron James, already the NBA’s career leader in points and minutes, is now the league’s leader in games played.
In another testament to his unmatched longevity, James played his 1,612th career game Saturday against the Orlando Magic, breaking Hall of Fame center Robert Parish’s record.
The accomplishment comes at a time when James is playing incredibly efficient basketball. Tasked with being supportive of Lakers guard Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves, James entered Saturday shooting 64.6 percent from the field while averaging 20.4 points, 7.6 rebounds and 5.8 assists in his previous five games.
On the season, he was averaging 21.3 points per game — his 23rd-straight season scoring at least 20 a game. He came into the game shooting 51.6 percent from the field and has made more than 50 percent of his shots in 15 of the last 17 years.
“I’ve always wanted to be available to my teammates, either in Cleveland, here (in Miami), and now, you know, in L.A.,” James said after the Lakers beat the Heat on Thursday.
“So it takes a lot. It’s a mental toll, man, trying to play a lot and being out there throughout this whole thing and then under the circumstances that I kind of been given. And it’s just a lot, man.”
Over his record 23 seasons, James has played in 87.7 percent of the possible games he could’ve played — a number that would’ve been even higher if not for a run of injuries suffered during his time with the Lakers.
James has missed at least 10 games in all but one of his seasons in Los Angeles — the 2019-20 championship season. Before playing with the Lakers, he’d missed more than 10 games just once in his career.
He’s played a high-impact style throughout his career — at 41 years old, he’s still one of the NBA’s best transition players. He’s 10th in career usage rate while having played 60,676 career regular-season minutes entering Saturday — more than 42 full days’ worth of NBA basketball.
Adding in playoff games, James has stepped onto an NBA court 1,904 times for 72,738 minutes.
Asked last month what term best encapsulates James’ greatness, Lakers coach JJ Redick pointed to James’ commitment.
“Like commitment to do all the things necessary to be great,” he said. “And I think of, I use the (term) ‘competitive stamina’ a lot with him, and you have to have a very high capacity to just do things over and over and over again and ring the bell over and over and over again.
“So I think it’s just that it’s that commitment to be great and being able to have the competitive stamina to do all the things necessary.”