Happy 32nd Birthday, LeBron James

www.basketball-reference.com, which is the greatest website ever invented, will allow you to search for players by age.  They define "age" as how old you were on February 1 of a particular season.  So, if you were born February 1, 1985, this would be your "age 32" season.  But if you were born February 2, 1985 this would still be your "age 31" season.  I suppose Feb. 1 is selected because it is roughly the midpoint of the season.


Anyway, this will be LeBron's "age 32 season" so to see where he fits with other 32 year old careers, you need to search.


Since you'd like to see stats like VORP. that means you need to do a couple different searches, because Oscar Robertson and Wilt, for example, have no VORP (the site doesn't keep that stat that far back) and you need to account for the fact that Kareem only has VORP for part of his career (as does Bird and Magic, etc.).


Anyway, here is one search http://bkref.com/tiny/S8kA2


Here is another to get the guys without VORP -- http://bkref.com/tiny/ria7b




Now, might I be a bit off using just these two searches?  Yes.  But, here is the best info I have on LeBron's rankings as a 32 year old.  This also assumes that he will not ever play another game this year and that he will record no positive or negative stats from now until the end of the season.


VORP - 1st
Points - 2nd
Win Shares - 2nd
Turnovers - 2nd
Games Started - 2nd
Minutes Played - 3rd
FG  - 3rd
FGA - 3rd
Games Played - 4th
FTA - 4th
PER, WS/48, 3PA, FTM -- all 5th place
Assists - 7th
3P made -- 9th


He is also 13th in steals. 
Maybe the most amazing stat -- 3rd in MP, 13th in steals, 78th in fouls (meaning he almost never gets called for a foul).


Not so great categories:
Effective FG% - 19th
3P% - 21st
TS% - 26th
Blocks - 36th
FG% - 40th
Total rebounds - 42nd
Free Throw Percentage - 74th.


With another 1 WS he will pass Wilt for #1 on the age 32 and under WS list. With another 325 points he will pass Kobe for the #1 32 and under scorer.  With another 118 minutes he will pass Garnett for #2 in MP, needs 628 to pass Kobe.


Happy birthday, LeBron.  For longevity purposes, keep in mind that to get in the top 5 for points and top 5 in assists he will need to play 5+ more years.  He already has played the 34th most minutes of any player, so playing 12,000 more minutes would place him in the top 3 all-time in minutes played.  At some point you expect to see diminishing returns.