It’s time to settle score between two stars
James, Abdul-Jabbar are in a league of their own. Here’s a statistical comparison of the pair
Make way for the new scoring King. With 38 points against the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday, LeBron James eclipsed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 34-year-old NBA career scoring record, officially earning the distinction as the best scorer in NBA history. With 28 games left of his 20th NBA season, James has 38,390 regular-season points, ahead of Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387.
The record is as much about longevity as it is a show of dominance. The league’s top three all-time scorers — James, Abdul-Jabbar and Karl Malone — are also the top three players in regular-season minutes played.
Yet even among ironmen, James stands out for his continued production during the latter stages of his career. Last season, then 37-year-old James averaged 30.3 points per game, the second-highest season average of his career, becoming the oldest player to average more than 30 points. The next oldest 30-point scorers were Stephen Curry and Michael Jordan at 33.
Yet James played in just 56 games. James played 224 fewer minutes last season compared with Abdul-Jabbar during the same stage of his career, but the current Lakers star scored 530 more points. Of their first 19 professional seasons, it was the secondhighest single-season scoring advantage for James and the fourth time he scored more while playing fewer minutes. The only other time James outscored Abdul-Jabbar by more in a season was James’ final year in Cleveland, his 15th NBA season, when he scored 2,251 points compared with AbdulJabbar’s 1,717 in 1983-84.
James’ late-career scoring binge, necessitated in part by the Lakers’ recent struggles that have the team in position to miss the postseason for a second consecutive season, pushed him into the top scoring spot despite still ranking third in minutes behind AbdulJabbar and Malone. The popularity of the three-point shot has helped James make up for the lost time.
Abdul-Jabbar made only one threepointer after the NBA adopted the line in 1979, which was already 10 years into his 20year career.
Since scoring a then-career-high 22.1% of his points on three-pointers in the 2018-19 season, James’ percentage climbed every year to 28.5% last season. Before 2018, James had scored 20% of his points from threepoint range only once, the 2014-15 season.
With two more years left on his contract and a known interest in sharing an NBA court with his 18-year-old son Bronny, James could extend his scoring lead to a number that could stand the test of time, even as NBA scoring averages increase across the board.
The closest player currently on an NBA team is Kevin Durant with 26,684 points. In an interview with ESPN, James mentioned the Brooklyn Nets star as a candidate to one day claim the scoring title. Even averaging the same 29.7 points the 34-year-old Durant was producing before a recent knee injury that cost him 13 games and counting, it would take Durant 394 games to pass James. That’s almost five 82-game regular seasons. Durant has played in 82 games of a regular season only once in his career.
Luka Doncic, this season’s current scoring leader, could be another contender. Averaging 33.4 points per game this season (tied with Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid) — more than James has ever averaged across a season during his career — the 23-year-old Dallas Mavericks star has 8,531 career points.
But with seemingly a whole career ahead, Doncic, who is likely to miss his third consecutive game Wednesday because of a heel injury, shut down the likelihood of him chasing down James’ scoring record based purely on a lack of longevity.
“I don’t know about 20 years,” Doncic said earlier this season when Dirk Nowitzki mentioned the possibility that the young superstar could break Nowitzki’s record of 21 seasons with one team. “That’s a long time to play basketball. I’d rather go back to my farm in Slovenia.”