Who does this

This is for the time capsule.

If there are professional sports in 2048, if we’re not back to flinging our conquered’s coconuts into sideways goals, I want them to know that Kelly Dwyer realized how freaky it was that LeBron James was this good in 2023.

I don’t know how the future works, I might have to print some of this stuff off, I’ll leave out my tepid reaction to Stephen Curry’s 2012 contract extension but, for the capsule’s contextual sake, leave in the Anthony Davis trade column. Davis is back soon, on a minute restriction, and not a second too soon: Los Angeles was trucked by L.A. on Tuesday night, in spite of LeBron’s unreal, mostly angry, output:

He is 38, which is impressive when you consider James also played in the NBA when he was 18. There have been other players with two decades’ NBA experience — Vince Carter, Robert Parish, Kevin Willis, Kevin Garnett, Dirk Nowitzki, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Kobe Bryant, Jamal Crawford, Udonis Haslem — only Bryant, Crawford and Carter managed to get up and down the court without audible murmurs from a worried audience.

Then there’s LeBron, over 30 points per game on 51 percent shooting, 8.5 boards and 6.9 assists, prime-Jordan stats. Jordan averaged 23 points, 5.7 boards and 5.2 assists at age 38, but only after taking a total of four and a half NBA seasons off to ease his knees. LeBron didn’t take his mid-30s off.

Jordan played 15 seasons, total, LeBron’s 15th season was a half-decade ago:

James vaulted past Magic Johnson and Larry Bird’s regular season NBA minutes in the same season I owned and used and rather enjoyed my Blackberry. Eight years later, James is third on the NBA’s list of minutes played behind Karl Malone and Abdul-Jabbar and will top Kareem’s minutes record in 2023-24 if everything continues apace.

It is so silly that we expect it should.