Perhaps you have seen the stunning statistic making the NBA rounds. If not: LeBron James is about to somehow become the sixth player among the top eight scorers in league history to play for the Los Angeles Lakers.

No. 1 Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. No. 2 Karl Malone. No. 3 Kobe Bryant. No. 5 Wilt Chamberlain. No. 8 Shaquille O’Neal.

And now, No. 7 James.

Maybe you are not even surprised. The next megastar is seemingly always looming for the Lakers. They will forever get the best players. Right?

Here is the secret that the Lakers don’t like to share: They haven’t been so sure lately. They were deeply and undeniably worried, perhaps for the first time in the team’s L.A. existence. This is why the Lakers’ controlling owner, Jeanie Buss, felt the need to abruptly fire her brother Jim and the club’s long-serving general manager, Mitch Kupchak, in February 2017. With Jim Buss and Kupchak in charge of basketball operations, Jeanie had begun to lose faith that a day like Sunday was in the Lakers’ future.

The playoff drought that ate away at Jeanie’s more customary optimism had stretched to a franchise-record five seasons in a row by the time the NBA’s free-agent summer of 2018 began.

Only this time, with Magic Johnson installed as the Lakers’ lead recruiter, James would be courted by a kindred spirit.

How many times over the years have you heard that sizing up James and Johnson, in terms of on-court traits, is a more apt comparison than measuring James against Michael Jordan? The first extended face-to-face conversation of their lives, shortly after the free-agency period began, led to a partnership less than 24 hours later, pitching together two supersized playmakers — one former and one current — who likewise share big off-court dreams and no shortage of social awareness.

Yet one suspects that the Lakers, deep down, realize this was as much (if not more) about Tinseltown’s magic dust than Magic’s. Whether it is for family comfort, business aspirations or the scrumptious weather, James clearly likes the idea of being in Hollywood at this stage of his life. His new team, as currently constructed, is not going to trouble the Golden State Warriors. But there are too many pluses, on James’ scorecard, to worry about that or the fact that the night before he joined the Lakers will be remembered for All-Star forward Paul George spurning the Lakers to stay in Oklahoma City.

We can’t say it often enough: This is the Player Power Era in the NBA, and James is its foremost flexer. He has zero interest in listening to our rules, our conventional wisdom, our anything.

James naturally wants more rings and surely believes that the Lakers will keep making moves to build the sort of squad that can actually help him win his fourth — presumably by continuing their efforts to trade for Kawhi Leonard. But he is also not going to force himself to go to Philadelphia in the name of an easier playoff path if he and his family would rather live in Southern California. I have consistently said that I wouldn’t dare leave the ever-forgiving Eastern Conference if I were him, but it should be pretty clear by now that he has little interest in external opinions. I’m not sure he even hears the debate-show shouters anymore.

LeBron will readily leave the legacy debates to everyone else and, if my instinct is right, enjoy how much chaos his choice has caused on a zillion basketball fronts. The Western Conference is now home to all seven active MVPs in the league: James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, Kevin Durant, Dirk Nowitzki and Derrick Rose. That list does not even include Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, Donovan Mitchell and two more Golden State All-Stars: Klay Thompson and Draymond Green. The gulf between the conferences, which seemingly dates to Jordan’s second retirement with the Chicago Bulls in 1998, has never looked wider.

The Lakers themselves, frankly, still have a few questions to answer, after following up the James coup by immediately coming to terms with the world’s foremost LeBron irritant: Lance Stephenson. How James and Lonzo Ball’s infamously vocal father LaVar coexist in the same ZIP code is another source of considerable curiosity, which explains why a number of rival teams already expect the Lakers to try to ship Lonzo Ball out at the first opportunity.

So, yes, there is much to unpack here.

But we have time to get into all that. The Summer of LeBron does not usually move this quickly. Let the magnitude of the moment sink in for at least a few more days before the fretting begins in earnest.

James did not win a championship in his first season with Miami, nor did he win it all in his first season after going back to Cleveland for his second stint with the Cavaliers. If he is easing into another new arrangement, as signing a four-year deal with the Lakers would suggest, we don’t have to have all the answers right away, either.