The ages of LeBron James: the scorer who did not want to be

• Chronicle LeBron James surpasses Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer among the chaos of the Lakers

LeBron James

receives twenty feet from the hoop, scans the court and decides it's time.

He begins to measure his defender with right shoulder blows.

A.

Two.

Three.

And when he has gained that span he was looking for, he throws the fadeaway on the swing.

Under the support of the basket is his son

, with whom he shares one last dream: to meet one day in the NBA;

next to him,

, co-founder of Nike, who bet 90 million dollars on him 20 years ago, when he had not yet set foot in the league.

The only one of the hundreds that appear in the image that he does not have a mobile in his hands to capture the moment.

In the opposite end line assists

, the legend who has just surpassed as the top scorer in NBA history.

swish.

The man who, at the age of 16, was anointed 'Chosen' on the cover of the largest sports journalism magazine;

the most scrutinized basketball player in history (it's the price of being the face of the NBA in the age of social media), he has exceeded all expectations.

It was everything and more than was required of him.

It is. Because at 38, in his 20th season in the league, you have to take the scalpel to look for signs that the end is near.

There will be time to find his place in history, which will inevitably be on Mount Rushmore of basketball.

Because, as

"while one encourages, it is not possible to establish the definitive profile of life yet."

A profile that he has traced with his own lines despite the demands that accompanied that baptism.

'The chosen one'.

The day he becomes the top scorer in NBA history is the day to remember that LeBron James was always suspicious of that label.

'Annotator'.

Not so much because he felt he couldn't score with the best--several times he has confessed to his "anger" at not seeing his name in those debates--but because he limited everything he could do in the clue.

The what and the how.

The vision of the game

tactical intelligence.

The ability to adapt.

LeBron always put a collective vision before the cannibalistic basketball that was demanded of a 'Chosen One',

The sin of the pass

Although in light of twenty years and four championship rings it sounds derisory, in the beginning there was doubt about LeBron's ability to be decisive in the final minutes.

On a visit to Portland in 2006, James gave up the last shot for a higher-placed teammate.

His Cavaliers lost by two.

The next game, in Denver, he missed two free throws in the last two seconds.

The Cavs lost by one.

With that backpack on his back, he faced the Eastern Finals in 2007 against the Detroit Pistons.

In a game typical of that concrete NBA, the Cavs reached the last attack of the first game losing by two points.

LeBron, who hadn't scored in more than six minutes, got past his defender and, when two other opponents jumped in the paint, he turned the ball into the corner for his teammate.

shoot a triple all by himself.

Marshall, who had decided the previous tie with his success from the outside, failed.

The condemnation of LeBron was unanimous.

It was inconceivable that a star would give up the sacred last shot for a better placed partner.

It is an unwritten part of the requirement.

And part of the cruelty that the failure was not forgiven for the next game, when he found himself in the same situation and decided to play it.

There is no winning hand when the sentence is written in advance.

But how to explain then what happened a week later in that same scenario.

With the tie tied, the Cavs forced to win a game away, and trailing by seven with three minutes to go, LeBron unleashed one of the greatest playoff displays of the modern era.

James scored the last 25 points for his team, 29 of the last 30, including 18 of the two overtimes.

In the decisive action, he slipped between the four defenders who closed on him in the paint and, with a honing in the air, scored the layup that buried the Pistons.

The kind of superhuman performance required of him.

At 22 years old, LeBron dragged those Cavaliers to a Finals for which they were not prepared.

And maybe neither did he.

Because the Spurs, zealously applying the booklet that the league had to stop him (giving him his left, forcing him to shoot) won 4-0.

When they passed each other in the hallways after Game 4,

offered young James solace.

"Someday this league will be yours."

Every challenge, a leap

A feature that explains the duration of LeBron James' reign, its validity twenty years later in a league unrecognizable with yesterday's eyes, is his permanent evolution, his ability to extract a path of evolution from each disappointment (a necessary nuance, because while Stephen Curry is a revolutionary player, James represents an evolutionary leap).

To that defeat in the 2007 Finals, and in the second round of the following year, he responds to the summer he spent with

-then a Cleveland assistant, today of the Lakers- rebuilding his shot from the ground up, gaining security with which six years later, in the 2013 Finals, he would kill the deciding game with a jump shot twenty feet from the rim.

The same one that six years ago they granted him without qualms.

In the same way, the loss in the 2011 Finals against the Dallas Mavericks, the lowest moment of his career, was followed by a visit that same summer to the ranch that

had bought in Texas to turn into his academy.

LeBron spent three days learning the art of the post game from the grandmaster and studied the videos over the summer to add another resource to a growing arsenal.

His post game would be key in the 2012 Finals.

For every challenge, one jump, and no challenge in his career greater than that of the Golden State Warriors.

Back in Cleveland, taking advantage of his connection to

, the outsider with whom he has best fitted, perfected both sides of the two for two, and turned it into a weapon to 'hunt' the pairings that did the most damage to defenses.

At the same time, he continued to expand his radius of action, moving away to the perimeter to adapt to this open NBA.

And although he has not become the most reliable shooter, he has given it to maintain his validity.

Even in his third age, already with the Lakers, he continues to be one of the top scorers in the paint, but this improvement in shooting has helped him lower the demands on his body (superhuman, but at 38 years old) and adapt to a board that has been turned over.

Without being a specialist, James is the ninth maximum triple shooter in history (he has 1,800 fewer baskets than Kareem);

but also without being a pure scorer he is already the greatest of all time.

And an aside to finish the numbers: he is also the fourth highest assist in history, behind only

,

and

LeBron James has had the burden of 'The Chosen One' tattooed on his back his entire career.

An excessive demand that even so has far exceeded.

Having just surpassed Abdul-Jabbar's record, he insisted that at the very least he sees himself playing another couple of seasons.

The time will come to establish his place in history, but until then all that remains is to remember that slogan that his sports brand dedicated to him, and which gave rise to a 10-story mural that presided over downtown Cleveland for four years. .

"We are all witnesses."

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