LeBron James is regarded as the best basketball player of all time by many NBA players, fans, and analysts, with the exception of a long list of Michael Jordan aficionados. James has won four MVP awards during the regular season, four NBA titles, four MVP awards in the Finals, two gold and one bronze medal from the Olympics, and twenty NBA All-Star appearances.
James now has another outstanding accomplishment to support his case against Jordan and players like Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whom James defeated to top the NBA’s all-time points scored list last season with 40,036 points.
Fans are beginning to question how far James can take his famous career because of the figures. According to NBC Sports,
James has already added about 1,700 points of distance between himself and Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 38,387. It might be time to add James’ NBA scoring record to the list of “records that will never be broken,” like Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games played in baseball, Wayne Gretzky’s 2,857 points in the NHL or Connecticut’s women’s basketball team winning 111 consecutive games. Wilt Chamberlain once averaged 50.4 points in a season in the NBA. Nobody else has ever come close to that. The highest any other player averaged in a full season was Elgin Baylor’s 38.3 per game; if someone averaged that much for an entire career, they would have had to play all 82 games for almost 13 seasons just to get to get to 40,000 points.
Will we ever see someone break LeBron’s records?
Some would argue that James’ strongest attribute isn’t scoring points; rather, it’s his ability to manage the entire floor and direct traffic like a maestro on the court when he has the ball in his hands. Nevertheless, the fact that he has scored more points than any other player in NBA history demonstrates how excellent and comprehensive of a player he is.
James, who joined the NBA in 2003 as the No. 1 overall draft pick after graduating from Akron, Ohio’s St. Vincent–St. Mary High School, may have had more expectations placed on him than any other player in NBA history. James is averaging 25.2 points, 7.9 assists, and 7.1 rebounds per game in his 20th NBA season.