Still in the thick of his prime, with the NBA's top talent firmly in his shadow, it doesn't seem possible that LeBron James has already won his last MVP award.James has four Maurice Podoloff trophies to his name, tying him with Wilt Chamberlain for the third most in league history. He has finished no worse than third in MVP voting since 2008-09, and he has ranked in the top 10 of final tallies through each of his first 12 campaigns.

Last season, as James often single-handedly willed the Cleveland Cavaliers to the NBA Finals, he finished third, behind James Harden and reigning MVP Stephen Curry. To that end, there are still those who believe he will match or exceed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record six MVP distinctions.
ESPN's forecast team has James grabbing the honor for a fifth time next season. But as he nears his 31st birthday in December, James is fast approaching the latter part of his career. The idea that he won't catch Abdul-Jabbar isn't absurd.
Nor is it especially dismissive to defend the more drastic stance: James won't even get to five.


Catering to Time
Call it the downside of getting older. The MVP voting process has yet to become a matter of measurable objectivity, but there are certain trends that stand the test of time and bring James' future place into question.

The average age of the last 15 MVP winners is between 26 and 27. Only twice during that time has the recipient been 30 or older, as James will be next season.
Now, traveling back even further, Michael Jordan earned two of his five nods after turning 32. Karl Malone won both his MVP awards long after his 30th birthday. Hakeem Olajuwon (31) and Abdul-Jabbar (32) did the same.

Age is a malleable barrier at its worst. Special talent does special things, so James' birth date, assuming health, won't be the sword upon which his MVP candidacy falls.
But the effects of age aren't so pliable. As we saw last season, even if James isn't severely injured, the Cavaliers are going to play it safe. He missed a career-high 13 games and logged under 2,500 total minutes for just the second time since entering the league.
Allen Iverson is the only MVP of the three-point era to miss more than seven games. Only two have ever failed to crack the 2,500-minute threshold: Malone and James himself. And both did so during lock-compacted campaigns (1998-99, 2011-12).

When applying their court time to a full 82-game slate, Malone and James actually posted the equivalent of 2,900-plus-minute seasons. You must go further back, to the 1977-78 crusade, to find an MVP (Bill Walton) who legitimately played fewer than 2,500 minutes.
Technically, after removing the lockout-truncated 2011-12 calendar from consideration, last season is James' lone sub-2,500 minute campaign—and he missed that benchmark by just seven minutes. Clearing that loose minimum remains the norm.
Here's the thing: James has logged more than 35,000 regular-season minutes. He already ranks seventh all-time in postseason minutes (7,561) and is a breath away from breaking into the top five. The Cavaliers have no choice except to restrict his regular-season exposure moving forward in order to limit the ill-trappings of age and ensure he's as fresh as possible for what they hope is multiple championship runs.
This is James' reality now. The "Is LeBron Slowing Down?" storyline, while still in its infancy, is gradually creeping to the forefront of pundit and public consciousness.
As ESPN.com's Brian Windhorst penned in December just ahead of James' 30th birthday:
James, who has a sore knee, is a few days away from his 30th birthday, and his legs aren't the same ones that could spring over Garnett six years ago. James recently played his 40,000th career NBA minute, including playoffs. Before he turns 30 on Dec. 30, James will have played more minutes than Larry Bird did in his entire career.
So it should not come as a surprise that James is starting to show his odometer. The numbers and the eye test show this season that James has perhaps lost a half step. And when sampling the past highlights, the difference becomes more pronounced.
Indeed, James recorded his lowest true shooting percentage and player efficiency rating since 2006-07. His playoff true shooting percentage during Cleveland's Finals run was also the absolute worst of his career.
Play styles (volume) and supporting cast (injuries) can all be cited as potential causes of James' statistical setbacks. But while James refuted opinions of his decline, he does understand the impact of Father Time.
"You can look at it in a bad way or a good way," he said of Windhorst's piece, per ESPN.com's Dave McMenamin. "I've expanded the rest of my game. I'm still out there making plays. My athleticism, obviously I'm not the 18-year-old kid that I was before. But I can still do the things I need to do to be successful."

 Different Role
More important than James' ability to succeed in spite of age, though, is the makeup of Cleveland's roster.
Playing beside two superstars in Kyrie Irving and Kevin Love, neither of whom is close to sniffing 30, warps the scope through which his value is viewed. It's more difficult to stake your claim as the league's most valuable player when teaming with two stars who can, at any point, perform just as well.

James bucked this very perception with the Miami Heat, winning back-to-back MVP awards in 2011-12 and 2012-13 with All-Stars Chris Bosh and Dwyane Wade. But sidestepping that stigma is a different, more difficult task in Cleveland.
There is supposed to be a noticeable contrast between the alpha and his sidekicks, no matter their names. As James gets older and presumably plays less during the regular season, it will be harder for him to keep that distance between both Love and Irving, the latter of whom, at 23, hasn't even entered his prime.

Both he and Irving notched 10.4, and we're likely (rapidly) approaching the day when it's Irving who leads the Cavaliers there. As Steve Nash is the only MVP of the three-point era to not lead his team in win shares, this wouldn't bode well for James' ongoing candidacy.
Love and Irving—who may not be ready for opening night, according to Chris Haynes of Northeast Ohio Media Group—aren't the most durable stars, and their absences will help James garner some extra attention. But even if neither supersedes James in volume or effectiveness anytime soon, the gap should still close. And that gap, as shown below, is an important part of the conversation (note that James' 2014-15 season is included only for perspective):
Since 1999-2000, the average MVP has amassed 6.5 win shares more than his second in command (leader, co-leader or second in team win shares). That difference holds true even when including all MVP winners dating back to 1979-80.
For James specifically, the disparity is usually bigger:
With the exception of his rookie year, James' dead-even finish with Irving last season is the lowest win-share gap of his career. And that's what cannot be dismissed, because on some level, though last year feels like an anomaly, it's a preview of an eventual standard.
More Pressing Priorities
James returned to Cleveland with the goal of winning championships and building something bigger—something that could sustain his championship window long after his prime faded into his twilight.
That mission, as Bleacher Report's Ric Bucher underscored in May, will come at the expense of MVP awards:
I'm saying no, he's not, largely because I don't know how important it is to LeBron. Going back to Cleveland and winning a championship? Absolutely. Winning another MVP award? I just don't see the motivation for him. And the fact is, yes, he's just turning 30. But we can't go by calendar age, because he came out of high school. ...
It's not so much that he's not capable of [it] past 30. I don't know how much it means to him. And physically, the beatdown—I think we've seen the beginning, dare I say it, the beginning of the end and maybe the best of LeBron James already.
If James wanted to be the primary on-court load-bearer for the rest of his career—or even the foreseeable future—he wouldn't have had as much of an incentive to leave Miami and the aging Wade. There wouldn't have been a rush for the Cavaliers to trade two No. 1 overall picks in Andrew Wiggins and Anthony Bennett for Love.
There wouldn't have been a need for the Cavaliers to take on salary at last February's trade deadline just to get James extra help.
Sure, James will remain part of the discussion so long as he's healthy, even as the field widens to include up-and-coming MVP studs such as Anthony Davis, Curry and Harden, among others. James being James, he could even win another one or two.
But there's also a chance he's done. And knowing how he ended up in Cleveland, beside two other megastars, actively acknowledging his own mortality with an uncharacteristic midseason break, the conclusion of his MVP-hoarding must not be seen as a failure or unexpected. It doesn't even make him less valuable to the Cavaliers.