LeBron James plays against Cleveland the day after his 40th birthday. How fitting.

“To be honest, if I really wanted to, I could probably play this game at a high level for another week or so – weird that I could say that – but another five or seven years if I wanted to,” James said . “But I won’t do that.”

We don’t know exactly when he will retire, but we can acknowledge that he is already in his second act.

When I examined the social impact of black athletes a decade ago, I wrote that James was perhaps the “unique, emancipated athlete in all of American professional team sports.” The then 30-year-old had already had a Hall of Fame career with two NBA championships and three Olympic medals, including two gold. But what really stood out was that, when the Black Lives Matter movement was in its infancy, James was finding his voice on social issues, building a reputation as a rainmaker in boardrooms, and working his way toward endorsement deals and instead developed a business model that he negotiated to acquire shares in the brands that were looking for his Midas touch.

He cultivated relationships with arch-capitalists, including television producer Tom Werner and investor Warren Buffet, and used these relationships not only to enrich himself but also to help build other athletes of his time. He took advantage of the NBA’s collectively negotiated free agency rules and showed other players that they could control their own financial destiny and their destiny on the court. With LeBron at the helm, everyone – not just billionaire team owners – could eat.

Since then, James has won two more NBA championships and converted his shares in English Premier League club Liverpool into part of the team’s corporate owner, Fenway Sports Group. That means he not only owns part of a football team, but has a stake in the company, which includes the Boston Red Sox, the Pittsburgh Penguins, a NASCAR racing team and a real estate company. Last month, his production company SpringHill merged with Fulwell 73, an entertainment company best known for producing “The Kardashians.”

James could have quit basketball at any time in the last 10 years and he would still have as much cultural influence as any of today’s rising business leaders or streaming stars. He would have had a greater cultural impact than almost any American athlete before him, with the possible exception of Michael Jordan and Muhammad Ali.