LeBron James, mired in shooting slump, is finally showing real signs of decline as he nears his 40th birthday

LeBron James is in the middle of one of the worst shooting slumps in NBA history. In his last four games, he's missed all 19 of his 3-point attempts. That's just a hair below RJ Barrett's record of 21 missed 3-pointers without a make across a four-game stretch, but it's ultimately not that rare in the grand scheme of James' career. 

He's always been a somewhat streaky shooter. He won his first two MVP awards shooting well below league-average on 3s. His worst 3-point shooting season (30.9%) since his rookie year (29.0%) came in his magical championship campaign of 2016. It's a slump that has the Lakers rethinking LeBron's goal of playing all 82 games this season.

The jump-shooting was always more of a bonus where he was concerned because in just about every other area, he was, well, LeBron. You can get away with shaky shooting when you're great at pretty much everything else. But the Lakers' 109-80 loss to the Timberwolves on Monday night was the culmination of a disturbing trend, one that has given us our first real glimpse into what LeBron will be when he's no longer LeBron.

The 0-for-4 shooting on 3-pointers is forgivable. But James also shot just 4-of-12 on 2-pointers, totaling just 10 points. He needed a fourth-quarter free throw just to cross the double-digit scoring threshold. It's something he's now done in 1,243 consecutive regular-season games, but it isn't coming quite as easily anymore. There was an 11-point outing against Phoenix earlier this season, and a 12-pointer against the Thunder on Friday. James had only two games with 12 points or less last season, and one of them was a blowout in which he played less than 25 minutes. He's already topped that by Dec. 2 this season.

Through 21 games, James is averaging a flat 22 points. Only his rookie average of 20.9 was lower. He's been above 25 every year since -- until now -- and his playing time is nearly identical to what it was a year ago. The volume isn't as concerning as the underlying efficiencies, though. The numbers actually suggest the Lakers would be better off getting less of LeBron but getting a better version of him while he's out there -- the Lakers have been a staggering 15.9 points per 100 possessions better with James off of the floor.

"We're just not good offensively right now," James told reporters after Monday's loss. "I think we spent so much time on trying to get our defense corrected that our offense just took a toll and took a back seat to that."

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LeBron finally showing physical limitations as he nears 40

What's scariest for the Lakers is that James no longer seems superhuman in the ways in which he's always seemed superhuman. He's no longer an unstoppable freight train in transition, for example. He still ranks eighth in the NBA in terms of total fast-break points per game at 4.3, but that's still a steep decline from recent years. He was at 5.1 a year ago and 6.2 a year before that. 

His efficiency has similarly dipped. He ranks in the 54th percentile in the NBA in terms of points per possession in transition, according to Synergy Sports. That's a career-low.

James has emphasized transition scoring in recent years in part to mask smaller declines in his half-court burst. But now the physical limitations that come with approaching your 40th birthday are starting to become more and more apparent on the stat sheet. He's shooting 67.9% in the restricted area, for instance. Again, pretty good in a vacuum, just a far cry from where he's been even in the recent past. He was at 73.3% a year ago and has been in the low-to-mid 70s throughout his Lakers tenure except for the 2019-20 championship season, when the Lakers consciously limited their spacing for the sake of having two big men defensively. That's not a tradeoff this year's team is making. He's making only 52.9% of his field goals off of drives this season. He was at 59.8% last season.

The Timberwolves game included a few pretty jarring misses by James' lofty standards. On this drive, James struggles to get a clean runner up through contact, but more distressingly, check out the freebie he misses on the offensive rebound.

His ability to separate from mismatches has diminished meaningfully as well. Naz Reid, a big man, tracks him across the court for this block.

Where does LeBron go from here?

Rumors of James' decline have been greatly exaggerated before. Remember the calls for the Lakers to trade him after they missed the playoffs in his first season in Los Angeles? Look hard enough and you can find skepticism as far back as his 2014-15 return to Cleveland, and that's a testament to the remarkably high standard he's set over the past 22 years.

But his improvement as a 3-point shooter was supposed to insulate him against any sort of steep decline. He made 41% of his triples a season ago, and his volume had steadily risen throughout his Lakers tenure. First-year Lakers coach JJ Redick has spoken openly about wanting James to shoot more 3s than he has in the past, not less. But for his career, jumpers have been the cherry, not the sundae, and right now, it looks as if the sundae is finally starting to melt.

That doesn't mean we can expect too many more 10-, 11- and 12-point performances in the near future. Those remain the outlier, and even if LeBron isn't quite LeBron on a night-to-night basis anymore, he's still mostly a good player. He's not remotely the defender he used to be, but he's still at least a good scorer and a great playmaker that rebounds far better than most at his position. The worst version of LeBron is still better than most of his peers.

That's just a startling drop off for someone who, at his peak, didn't really have peers. That might be what decline for a quadragenarian James looks like. The accumulated skill and expertise that have come with two decades of dominance might mean that he remains a very effective player overall until he retires, but the weight those two decades have put on his body mean that he can no longer maximize them in the ways he could even a year or two ago. 

He's as good as a soon-to-be-40-year-old can be, but we're finally starting to see the limits of how good any soon-to-be-40-year-old can really be. He's mortal now, and vulnerable on the wrong nights. Monday was such a night, and with his 40th birthday now only weeks away, there are probably going to be more of them than ever moving forward.