Le­Bron James be­gan the fi­nal game of his 20th NBA sea­son with the high­est-scor­ing post­sea­son half of his match­less NBA ca­reer.

He end­ed the night by ques­tion­ing how much longer he plans to chase his­to­ry af­ter his Los An­ge­les Lak­ers were swept out of the West­ern Con­fer­ence fi­nals.

James set a per­son­al record with 31 points in the first half of Game 4 on Mon­day night, but he missed two po­ten­tial ty­ing shots in the fi­nal minute as the Den­ver Nuggets end­ed the Lak­ers’ sea­son with a 113-111 vic­to­ry.

The 38-year-old James fin­ished with 40 points, 10 re­bounds, nine as­sists and im­mense frus­tra­tion af­ter Los An­ge­les’ re­mark­able late-sea­son surge end­ed with four con­sec­u­tive de­feats. Al­though the top scor­er in NBA his­to­ry spoke about him­self as part of the Lak­ers next sea­son, James al­so said he hasn’t made up his mind.

“We’ll see what hap­pens go­ing for­ward,” James said in the fi­nal an­swer of his postgame news con­fer­ence. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to think about, to be hon­est. Just for me per­son­al­ly go­ing for­ward with the game of bas­ket­ball, I’ve got a lot to think about.”

James is un­der con­tract for $46.9 mil­lion next sea­son with the Lak­ers, but he is in charge of his fu­ture af­ter sur­pass­ing Ka­reem Ab­dul-Jab­bar’s ca­reer scor­ing record ear­li­er this year. He hasn’t pre­vi­ous­ly sug­gest­ed much per­son­al con­flict about fin­ish­ing his con­tract along­side An­tho­ny Davis, and his play hasn’t sig­nif­i­cant­ly de­clined af­ter two decades in the NBA — al­though his health has grown less stur­dy, par­tic­u­lar­ly in his balky feet and an­kles.

“It’s all about avail­abil­i­ty for me and keep­ing my mind sharp, and things of that na­ture,” James said. “Be­ing present on the floor, be­ing present in the lock­er room and bus rides and plane rides, things of that na­ture. It’s chal­leng­ing, for sure. It was a very chal­leng­ing sea­son for me, for our ball­club, and ob­vi­ous­ly we know what­ev­er went on ear­ly on (in the Lak­ers’ 2-10 start to the sea­son). It was cool, a pret­ty cool ride.”

James missed a month of the reg­u­lar sea­son with a foot in­jury down the stretch, but he re­turned with a se­ries of stel­lar play­off per­for­mances while the Lak­ers knocked off sec­ond-seed­ed Mem­phis and elim­i­nat­ed de­fend­ing cham­pi­on Gold­en State. That didn’t mat­ter much to James, whose frus­tra­tion broke through at sev­er­al points af­ter Game 4.

“I don’t like to say it’s a suc­cess­ful year, be­cause I don’t play for any­thing be­sides win­ning cham­pi­onships at this point in my ca­reer,” James said. “You know, I don’t get a kick out of mak­ing a con­fer­ence (fi­nals) ap­pear­ance. I’ve done it a lot, and it’s not fun to me to not be able to be a part of get­ting to the (NBA) Fi­nals.”

In his NBA-record 282nd ca­reer play­off game, James dropped 21 points in a dy­nam­ic first quar­ter in Game 4. He added 10 more in the sec­ond while play­ing near­ly the en­tire half of a do-or-die game against the top-seed­ed Nuggets.

But James had on­ly nine points on 4-of-12 shoot­ing in the sec­ond half, and he missed two chances to score in the fi­nal minute. He took a strange fall­away jumper that missed bad­ly with 26 sec­onds left, and his fi­nal dri­ve to the hoop was thwart­ed by Den­ver’s Ja­mal Mur­ray and Aaron Gor­don at the buzzer.

But the first half was vin­tage Le­Bron: He made 11 of his 13 shots and hit four 3-point­ers with­out a miss in the high­est-scor­ing play­off half of his ca­reer, which be­gan in 2003 and has in­clud­ed four NBA cham­pi­onships. James added four re­bounds and four as­sists, and he al­so got a tech­ni­cal foul af­ter a phys­i­cal ex­change with Gor­don when the two got locked up on the Lak­ers’ end of the court.

James had strug­gled from dis­tance pre­vi­ous­ly in the se­ries, go­ing 3 for 19 in the first three games. He fixed his shot in Game 4 — and he even got cred­it for a 3-point­er in the first quar­ter when his lob pass to Rui Hachimu­ra ac­ci­den­tal­ly went in the bas­ket.

James al­ready had the high­est scor­ing av­er­age in NBA his­to­ry in elim­i­na­tion games (33.5 points per game) among all play­ers with at least 10 such ap­pear­ances.

Af­ter fail­ing to win a ti­tle this year, James is clear­ly think­ing about whether he wants to do it all again. One ma­jor ob­sta­cle to any re­tire­ment thoughts is his long-stat­ed de­sire to play an NBA sea­son along­side his son, Bron­ny, who will be a fresh­man at USC this fall and couldn’t join the league un­til the fall of 2024 at the ear­li­est.

“I guess I’ll re­flect on my ca­reer when I’m done, but I don’t know,” James said when asked to as­sess his 20th sea­son. “The on­ly thing I con­cern my­self with is be­ing avail­able to my team­mates, and I don’t like the fact that I didn’t play as many games as I would have liked be­cause of in­jury. That’s the on­ly thing I care about, is be­ing avail­able to my team­mates.”

LOS AN­GE­LES (AP) —