LeBron James' rage against the...

LeBron James is still playing Father Time two months after his 38th birthday, 19 days after breaking the NBA's all-time scoring record, and a week after making his record-tying 19th All-Star appearance.

In less than two hours, news shifted from the Lakers ruling James out of a crucial game against the Memphis Grizzlies to claims that his right foot injury will keep him out for "an extended length of time" (several weeks), to his own admission that this "F*n sucks."

Just when his 12th-place Lakers were showing signs of life, having won four of five games since an eventful trade deadline, James is fighting the one opponent he can't overcome, and they're heading for another overtime. What happens to the Lakers without him is an afterthought. The basketball vitality of one of the all-time greats, if not the all-time great, is in grave danger.

Even with James, the Lakers faced a difficult road to avoid a second consecutive lottery trip, much alone get past the first round of the playoffs for the first time since their title in 2020. His recent absence is additional proof that the bubble title was the outlier, not the injuries around it, and we are now years into a normal decline that comes with aging, whether James or anybody else would accept it.

In comparison to the rest of his astonishingly long career, James' time in Los Angeles has been marred by injuries almost from the outset. James hurt his groin five days before his 34th birthday, two months after making his Lakers debut. His subsequent 17-game layoff was the first severe injury of his career; he had never previously missed more than 13 games in a single season.

Prior to the groin issue, James had played 156 consecutive games, including two arduous Finals trips, a league-leading 3,026 minutes in his final season with the Cleveland Cavaliers, and his first 34 games with the Lakers.

Since then, his biggest runs without an offseason have been the 24 straight games he played on route to a title on the bubble and the 25 straight he played until his left knee swelled in January 2022.

When James said of the stretch run during his pregame All-Star news conference on Feb. 19, "It's 23 of the most important games of my career for a regular season," his "hope I can figure out a way to just make sure that I'm available on the floor every single night" was just that: hope against an undefeated Father Time.

They used their 2027 first-round draft selection to bolster their squad this season, knowing full well that James' feet were on precarious footing and that five of their six trade deadline signings may be free agents in July. Improvements on the open market may be aimed towards a lottery team at the conclusion of a legend's career.

After next season, James will undoubtedly follow his ambition of playing with his oldest kid, Bronny, in L.A. or somewhere as a free agent. In the meanwhile, asking him to carry a contender is asking the Lakers to accomplish something they haven't done in five years: carry him to the playoffs. Either that, or James defies the odds once more – never a bad long-shot wager, given that no one else has given Father Time such a run.