Relative to other NBA players, LeBron James has enjoyed tremendous fortune throughout his 22-year career. He has won four championships for three different franchises. He has remained sufficiently healthy through more than two decades to set league records for career points and minutes. He has shared the court with a number of all-time greats, and he even lucked into landing reigning scoring champ Luka Doncic as his latest legendary co-star.
But one corner of LeBron's game has been tremendously unlucky, even as his Los Angeles Lakers rise up the Western Conference standings.
Let's investigate a statistical curiosity even stranger than a 40-year-old averaging 25 points, 9 assists and 8 rebounds. We'll examine a new wrinkle in James' profile, the remarkable reasons behind it, and the implications for the Lakers' title chances and James' future.
LeBron's bad luck: A perplexing plus-minus mystery
James isn't playing through the typical degree of misfortune that hits every NBA player. This is something else entirely -- a once-in-a-decade level of lousy luck hindering the greatest player of the century.