LeBron James is 31-years-old, has been in the league for nearly a decade and a half, and still believes he's getting better. After what he was able to do in the NBA Finals, especially over the last three games, maybe he's correct in assessing himself as a player still on the rise as opposed to dealing with the decline of a long career full of NBA Finals appearances and an insane amount of mileage. Becoming the first team to come back from a 3-1 Finals deficit against the 73-win Golden State Warriors gave the Cleveland Cavaliers their first title and LeBron a euphoric feeling that hasn't quite set in yet.
In an interview with Rachel Nichols for ESPN, LeBron was asked about the eventual decline every player goes through. James knows the length of his career so far means that he's on the wrong side of the hill, but he also said he believes he's still climbing up that hill of his career. From ESPN:
"Where are you on the basketball skills arc? Because it's a hill. You'll eventually be going down?" Nichols asked LeBron.
"I know I'm on the other side of the hill, being I'm about to be 14 [years in]," LeBron said. "But my hill, I'm not going down the hill right now. I'm still climbing."
Could he still be getting better? From a skills standpoint, the knowledge and physical attributes LeBron currently possesses on his way to the Hall of Fame could become more dangerous if he can regain his jump shot accuracy. When he made his way to Miami in 2010, he ended up becoming a very reliable jump shooter from both mid-range and 3-point range. His career accuracy in Cleveland has been 37.8 percent from 16-23 feet and 33 percent from deep. In Miami, he shot 41.4 percent from mid-range and 36.9 percent from downtown.
His mid-range jumper has been solid since returning to Cleveland in 2014 (39 percent), but his 3-point shooting has fallen back down to 33.3 percent. It especially fell off a cliff at the end of his 2014-15 campaign and remained poor through this past season until the final few games of the NBA Finals win when it seemed to return to form. If his jumper is fixed again and he can become an above average 3-point shooter, his climb up that hill will keep going instead of finding his way down on a decline.
In the interview, LeBron also talked about how it would be a disservice to the league and his teammates if he just focused on the Warriors with Kevin Durant. He was surprised like everybody else when KD went there, but he's focused on his team and defending their NBA championship.
