Will LeBron James become the NBA’s All-time leading scorer next season? How many points is James behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
LeBron James could be on the verge of making NBA history next season, which would further cement his place as one of the all time greats.
Is LeBron James the greatest basketball player of all time? I don’t know. And I’m not here to try to convince you one way or another. What is undeniable is that LeBron is on the verge of topping one of the most important statistical lists in the game.
The King on the verge of history
The kid out of Akron that has been in the national spotlight since his junior year of high school has met, and exceeded every expectation set upon his broad shoulders when he was taken number one overall in the 2003 NBA Draft.
He has won everything there is to win over the course of his near 20-year career. The current Los Angeles Laker is a four time NBA Champion with four Finals MVP awards and has been named MVP of the league four different times. He has been the scoring champion just once in his career, back in 2008 when he averaged 28.4 points a game with the Cleveland Cavaliers.
Love him or hate him, the 18 time All-Star has given basketball fans no choice but to put him in the conversation for greatest player to every play the game. He, along with Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Wilt Chamberlin and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (insert whoever you may see fit in this list) are widely considered the GOATs, but James says he has he never gets the credit for how good of a scorer he is.
Kareem is within James’ sights
In his 19 years in the league he has averaged over 20 point per game in every season. Outside of his rookie year, where he averaged 20.9 points, he has never averaged less than 25 points a game. He posted 25 a game in the 2020 season, and responded last year by putting up 30.3 a game for Los Angeles in what was a tragic season for the Lakers.
With his incredible longevity, and fantastically consistent scoring it was only a matter of time before LeBron started to flirt with Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time scoring record of 38,387.
James surpassed Karl Malone for second on the all-time list last season, and will come into the next season with 37,062 career points, just 1,325 points behind the former Lakers big man.
That means that if James plays in all 82 games, he will only need to average 16.15 points per game to tie Abdul-Jabbar. It’s doubtful that James will play all 82 regular season games considering he is on the verge of turning 38 in December, but if he plays 56 games like he did last season he will need just 23.6 points per night, a number he has reached in every one of his NBA seasons, not counting his rookie year.