More than any other player of his generation, LeBron James has been able to control the speed of everything around him. Since his early days in Cleveland, James has exerted near-autocratic control over widening spheres of influence, from the on-court geometry of individual possessions through leaguewide revolutions in roster construction and player power. The game, both on and off the court, slowed down for him, and it stayed that way for a decade and a half.

Now, though? Life’s starting to come at LeBron awfully goddamn fast.

In the closing seconds of the Los Angeles Lakers’ Sunday visit to Madison Square Garden to take on the New York Knicks, James isolated on the left wing against Mario Hezonja, a former top-five pick who we might charitably describe as a player who’s yet to really click on the NBA level (we could also use less charitable words). Either way, Croatian Kobe is not known as an ace defender. We’ve seen this scenario play out countless times: LeBron orchestrates the matchup he wants, draws a vulnerable defender out into deep water, strings out his dribble, and either blows past the hapless mark to the cup for a layup or a foul, or steps back and drills a game-winning jumper.

Not this Sunday, though. This time, LeBron sized up his chosen quarry … and went absolutely nowhere. Hezonja slid step for step with LeBron on the drive, stayed square when LeBron tried to bump him off with his right shoulder to create space for a clean look, timed LeBron’s final fadeaway perfectly, and got up higher than the King on the leaning release. The result: a blocked shot, an empty trip, the Knicks’ first win in nine games, the Lakers’ 14th loss in 18 tries, and a new valley in LeBron’s increasingly disastrous first season in Los Angeles.

Sure, LeBron scored a team-high 33 points to go with eight assists, six rebounds, and a block on Sunday. And sure, the Lakers outscored the Knicks by nine points in his 35 minutes of floor time and got outscored by 10 in the 13 minutes he sat. But the stat-sheet stuffing matters less than the fact that James went 4-for-15 in the fourth quarter—recording the most missed shots he’s ever had in a single quarter—as the Lakers allowed an 11-point lead to evaporate in the game’s final four minutes, ensuring a season sweep at the hands of an awful opponent that LeBron has owned, physically and mentally, for ages.

My colleague Haley O’Shaughnessy recently noted the stark disparity between the way this season has looked on LeBron’s Instagram account and the way it’s played out in real life. But if you want to talk about images of James that tell the story, you’d have a hard time beating this one from Sunday:

One of the greatest players of all time laid low by the league’s lowliest team and being scoffed at by a lottery washout; the King bending the knee, likely only days away from officially bowing out of the playoffs: oh, how the mighty have fallen. But as the focus starts to turn to what this debacle means for LeBron’s legacy, it’s worth thinking about the shorter term, too. While the Lakers signed LeBron to be the linchpin of their next championship-contending team, this circling-the-drain season is offering at least some cause for concern that, after more than 56,000 career regular- and postseason minutes and 168 playoff games in his eight straight runs to the Finals, he just might not physically be up to that task anymore.

Contrary to popular belief (including ones espoused by me in this space) all things are not possible through LeBron. The Lakers have only the longest of shots at cracking the West’s top eight, and are closer to top-five draft lottery odds than they are to the playoff picture. And while James’s Christmas Day groin strain will go down as the single biggest culprit in L.A.’s disintegration this season—the Lakers were 20-14 after beating the Warriors on December 25, in position for a top-four seed, and within striking distance of the top spot in the crowded West—his presence and performance alone have not been enough to guarantee success: Sunday’s loss dropped the Lakers to 25-26 in the 51 games in which LeBron has played, and just 5-12 since his return to the lineup following the groin-strain-spurred absence.

James has slowed down this season—literally. According to Second Spectrum’s statistics, the average speed at which he moves around the court is lower this season than it’s been in any of the six seasons for which NBA.com has recorded data. This drop has been especially notable on the defensive end; among those averaging more than 10 minutes per game, the only players who have moved more slowly this season when the other team has the ball are Dirk Nowitzki, who can basically no longer move at all, and James Harden, whose defensive issues have long been a topic of public debate.

How much stock you put in those speed numbers may vary. LeBron, famously, isn’t a fan of them, and maybe you subscribe to the notion that players with offensive workloads as titanic as James and Harden need to conserve their energy whenever possible. Whatever your stance, though, it’s tough to argue that Lakers LeBron has looked like the James of old defensively, especially since returning from his groin strain. Before his injury, the Lakers allowed 104.5 points per 100 possessions in his minutes; since his return, they’ve given up 111.5 points-per-100 with him on the court. Part of that is due to horrendous teamwide defense at the point of attack since losing Lonzo Ball to what may turn out to be a season-ending ankle sprain. But even within the context of the Lakers’ underwhelming collective effort, James’s combination of general off-ball uninterest and an inconsistent top-end burst has resulted in his at times looking like a minus on that end, particularly lately.

Harden makes up for his defensive issues by jockeying with Giannis Antetokounmpo for the title of most unstoppable and devastating offensive player in the NBA. It’s a title LeBron has held for much of the past decade and a half, but — as weird as this is to say about a player averaging 27.5 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 8.0 assists per game — it’s one he’s relinquished this season. James hasn’t exactly become averse to contact: He’s averaging 12.1 drives to the basket per game this season, up from 11.7 per game last season, 11.3 in 2016-17, and 11.1 in 2015-16, and he ranks in the 85th percentile in shot frequency at the rim, according to Cleaning the Glass, in line with the best marks of his career. But he’s meeting with less success once he gets there; after ranking in the 90th percentile or better at his position in shooting accuracy inside the restricted area for 13 of the last 14 seasons, James ranks in the 76th percentile among forwards this season. According to research by Dave McMenamin of ESPN, James has been blocked on a potential go-ahead field goal attempt in the final five seconds of a game only six times since 2008; after Sunday’s swat by Hezonja, it’s now happened twice in the past two months.

LeBron has paired that decline in effectiveness inside with a sharply increased willingness to cast away from outside, posting the highest 3-point attempt rate of his career despite shooting just 33.9 percent from long distance. He has grown especially fond of the stepback triple; he’s taken 45 this season, on pace to surpass last season’s 49, which was far and away the most he’d taken in a season going back to 2007-08, the first season for which NBA.com’s shot-tracking data includes stepback jumpers. And whatever kind of footwork precedes his jumper, James is taking them from farther away more frequently than ever: 23.9 percent of his total field goal attempts this season have been deep 3s from 25 feet out or beyond, by far the highest share of his career, and nearly four times the rate he posted when he entered the league in 2003.

Maybe that’s just a function of LeBron’s desire to keep up in a league being pulled farther and farther away from the hoop, and with the likes of Harden and Luka Doncic as they pioneer more effective ways of getting clean looks. Maybe, though, it’s because launching from 30 is a hell of a lot easier than running between the tackles 25 times a game.

”I think he is preserving his body,” a scout told ESPN in December. “Doesn’t want to have everything going to the rim and take a pounding this early in the season. I think those shots will be fewer in the playoffs. Right now, they are easy shots for him to take. Doesn’t really have to work for them.”

Barring something truly miraculous happening in L.A.—or something catastrophic happening in a few other Western Conference cities—LeBron won’t be taking any shots in these playoffs, marking his first offseason break in 13 years. Maybe he’ll take advantage of all that extra time to rest up, and will come back in September rejuvenated and better equipped to carry the load for the Lakers. (And maybe Magic Johnson and Rob Pelinka will put a significantly stronger supporting cast around him, too.) That’s the hope if you’re a Lakers fan, at least. But as this titanically disappointing season draws to a close, the fear that lives on the flip side of that hope looms ever larger—that the best days of one of the best players ever are already behind him, and that he’ll never reach those heights again in a Lakers uniform.