When LeBron James broke another NBA record earlier this month, the record for most career regular-season minutes played, his Los Angeles Lakers teammates handled the moment in typical locker room fashion.

They made fun of him.

“They told me I was fucking old,” James joked.

By NBA standards, they’re not wrong. He was dubbed “The Kid from Akron” when the Ohio native entered the league nearly 22 years ago with a limitless future. He is now the 40-year-old from Los Angeles with streaks of gray in his beard. He turned 40 on Monday and in his next game will become the first player in NBA history to appear in a game in his teens, 20s, 30s and 40s.

A feat like this has happened a few dozen times in baseball. It happened in hockey — Gordie Howe was a player for five decades, playing in the NHL from his teens until he was 50 — but never in the NFL or NBA. Until now. James writes more basketball history and founds his very own club.

“In some ways he’s a freak of nature,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said. “I have worked with a lot of great players and he is one of the hardest working players I have ever been around. I mean, he doesn’t take a day off. He doesn’t seem to take an afternoon off. He is constantly working on some part of his body. You meet him and he’s always drinking something or eating something or has some device attached to him.”

For the NBA, a 40th birthday means the end on the court is near. James will become the 30th player to appear in a regular-season game with a “4” as the first digit of his age; only nine recorded more than 51 games after this birthday. He will be the 32nd player overall to play after turning 40; Tim Duncan and Danny Schayes both turned 40 in the playoffs of their final seasons.

And at this age, for the most part, there are no big numbers.

Only Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who did it three times), John Stockton (twice), Michael Jordan, Robert Parish and Karl Malone have averaged more than 10 points in a season after turning 40. Jordan averaged 22.4 points in 30 games in his final season with Washington after turning 40; Malone is the youngest to do so, averaging 13.2 points in 42 games after turning 40 with the Lakers in 2003-04.

James, on the other hand, still puts up All-Star-level numbers: 23.5 points, 9 assists and 7.5 rebounds per game. Forget that doing something like this at 40 is unheard of. Doing this at 30 is virtually unheard of. The only players to reach these numbers in all three categories in a season after turning 30 are James (who did it at 33 and 35) and James Harden (who did it at 31).

“The size, the strength and the IQ… with his build and the way he takes care of himself, he doesn’t have to be the best athlete in the world. “At one point he was,” Miami Heat coach Erik Spoelstra said. “We’re not talking about the best athlete in the association. He was arguably the best athlete in the world, just size, strength, agility and explosiveness combined. But at this size and if he just wants to slow the game down and just use his brains and IQ, he could do that for another decade. I doubt he’ll be interested in it. But he could do it.”

Nobody knows when James will stop playing. And it certainly doesn’t get any easier: James wanted to play all 82 games this season and couldn’t. He was widely criticized when the Lakers hit a slump earlier this season and faced plenty of backlash when his team drafted his son Bronny in the second round last summer in what many thought was simple nepotism.

He has always been a lightning rod. If his game declines at 40, his naysayers will be lining up to enjoy it.

“It’s a lot harder physically and emotionally to face what these guys have to experience night after night after night,” Golden State coach Steve Kerr said of top NBA stars who are aging, like Stephen Curry by James and the Warriors – who will do that? I’ll be 37 in March. “There is a reason why players have to give up. You know, they can’t do it forever.”

James won’t do it either.

But even when he’s playing alongside 30-year-olds like Giannis Antetokounmpo, James – who reportedly spends more than $1.5 million a year on his fitness and has some sort of mechanic on site at all times to take care of everything , what his body needs, a personal sports training guru in Mike Mancias – has shown how to play well past what were once considered an NBA player’s prime years.

“What he’s done is incredible, it’s never been done before, especially at the level he’s playing at,” Antetokounmpo said. “I’m always looking to the other players to give us the blueprint and that’s never been done before. “I definitely want to play late in my career, like 37, 38, 39, as long as my body allows . But I have to take good care of my body, and I believe that too, but it kind of gave us the path, the blueprint for us. We just have to follow.”

The accolades are countless: James is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, has a spot in the GOAT conversation, most minutes played, four NBA championships, three Olympic gold medals, 20 and likely soon 21 All-Star selections, oldest to the oldest to do so, generational wealth with a net worth of more than $1 billion and so on and so forth.

The question arises: What do you get a 40-year-old who has everything?

“I don’t even know,” lamented Bronny James – another example of James being one of them and the first father in NBA history to have his son as a teammate.

James has hinted that the end is near. “Don’t make me feel old now,” he said, only half-jokingly, when asked about his upcoming 40th birthday earlier this month. He is under contract for next season but has given no guarantee as to how long he will play. He said that he “won’t be playing for that much longer, to be completely honest” and insisted that he “won’t be playing until then.” “the wheels fall off” because he doesn’t want to disrespect the game.

No player scored more points in his youth than James. The same goes for his 20s. Only Malone and Abdul-Jabbar scored more points in their 30s than James. And now he’s 40 and James is still going strong.

It’s the final decade of a basketball career like no other.

“The fans pay attention every time he steps on the court because they see one of the greatest players of all time, still playing at an incredibly high level even though he turns 40 this month,” Silver said. “I am amazed at him.”