What’s the Secret to LeBron James’ Athletic Invincibility?

CLEVELAND — For most of LeBron James’ career, there’s been one question—will he ever do it?

The “it” was bringing a title to Cleveland, and last June the kid from Akron had his crowning moment. So now a new question arises.

How much longer can he do it?

But now, for the near 32-year-old James, the “it” is very different. The “it” is: How much longer can he play?

James has logged 13 seasons, 11 of which have included playoff appearances and seven of which have ended in the NBA Finals. Entering the 2016-17 campaign, James has played 46,861 minutes of professional basketball. That’s 5,532 minutes more than Larry Bird’s entire career.

While James “only” ranks 39th in career regular-season minutes played, according to Basketball-Reference.com, he’s already fourth on the list of career playoffs minutes logged.

For comparison’s sake, we took the top six players from each of the career regular-season and playoffs minutes leaderboards. That gave us a nice sample size of 10 players. Here are the other nine considered:

We then added up each’s minutes at the completion of his 13th season, including age (in parentheses) next to the player name. You can select the total, regular and playoffs minutes tabs to see how James stands out:

Total Minutes by 13th NBA SeasonCreate column charts

And in a career filled with remarkable achievements, perhaps the most remarkable is that James has never been seriously hurt.

“It’s incredible,” said Stephen Silas, an assistant with the Cavaliers during James’ rookie season (and son of then-Cavaliers head coach Paul Silas). “There are players who are injury-prone, and I guess he is just one of those players who is not. He just has that body and that will.”

But James is now starting to push the limits of the typical NBA life span. Kobe Bryant’s and Tim Duncan’s bodies hit that “wall” at about 54,000 minutes. Even Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the prototypes for long, healthy NBA careers, fell off at about 60,000 minutes.

At his current pace, James will reach Bryant and Duncan in two seasons, Malone and Abdul-Jabbar in four.

With 82 regular-season games, plus playoffs, the nightly wear and tear on an NBA player can cause pain all over—injuries to the back, knees, ankles, shoulders and fingers are all common. And that doesn’t include the freak injuries like broken legs and arms.

“They’re just so big and so strong and so fast that it’s amazing they aren’t all hurt all the time,” said Jim Williams, a team injury consultant for the Cavaliers during James’ first stint with the franchise.

And with longer AAU, high school, college and NBA seasons, basketball players are playing more basketball …

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