TORONTO — The NBA career scoring record had stood for five seasons when Dolph Schayes passed George Mikan in 1957-58. Schayes held the mark for six years before Bob Petit passed him.
The former St. Louis Hawks forward — a two-time MVP and an all-NBA selection every season of his 11-year career — only held the top spot for two seasons before Wilt Chamberlain swept past him with his 20,881st point in 1964-65, just his sixth season.
And then Chamberlain — who famously averaged 50.4 points a game over 80 games in his third year and averaged 30.1 points a game for his career — put the record seemingly out of reach, becoming the first NBA player to top 25,000 and then 30,000 points before retiring with 31,419 in 1973.
That’s where the career scoring record remained for 18 seasons, until Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s skyhook from the right baseline against the Utah Jazz in April of 1984 moved him past Chamberlain. And when Abdul-Jabbar kept playing for another five productive seasons — he was an all-star in each and helped the Lakers to three more championships, his last at age 40 — the record seemed unbreakable.
The list of players who failed to surpass Abdul-Jabbar’s record is a list of GOATs and GOAT aspirants. Karl Malone averaged 25 points a game over 19 seasons and until a knee injury in his final year played 1,424 out of a possible 1,434 games, and yet he never caught Abdul-Jabbar, running out of years as the second leading scorer of all-time. Kobe Bryant broke into the NBA at 18 and scored 60 points in his final game 20 years later, and he fell short. Michael Jordan joined Chamberlain as the only player in league history to average 30 points a game for a career, but playing three years of college basketball, missing most of two seasons in his prime to play baseball and then sitting out for two more before the Chicago Bulls icon played two final seasons in his late 30s with the Washington Wizards meant that Jordan left the game as the third leading scorer when he finally hung it up. Dirk Nowitzki, the most prolific European player in history, never cracked 32,000 points and Shaquille O’Neal, ‘the most dominant ever’ never topped 30,000.
All of this is meant to try to put into perspective what LeBron James did on Thursday, as he scored 36 points to break the hallowed mark record that had stood for 39 years and may stand for another 40 to come.
It’s not just that James is the most prolific scorer in NBA history, it’s that no one else still playing will ever be particularly close.
Carmelo Anthony, Chris Bosh, and Dwayne Wade — taken third, fourth and fifth in the remarkable 2003 draft where James went first overall — combined to play in 34 all-star games but James is already 10,000 points past Anthony, and all three of his pals are well retired.
Because James has been so great for so long — he scored 25 points in this first NBA game on Oct. 29, 2003, and 21 in his second, playing on the back end of back-to-back — there has been an air of inevitability around him passing Abdul-Jabbar. But before he started it seemed like it could never happen.
James himself has said that while he had big goals when he came into the league — having “Chosen 1” tattooed across your shoulders doesn’t suggest a lack of confidence — getting to 38,000 points and having a chance to break Abdul-Jabbar’s record wasn’t one of them.
Who could plan that far ahead?
Lately, it’s seemed like James getting the record — and just days after passing Hall-of-Fame point guard Steve Nash for No.4 all-time in assists — was a foregone conclusion, but for all of his talent, predicting a career like he’s had two decades ago was no sure thing.
“I mean, Kareem played so long and was such a dominant offensive player for so long, I don’t think anyone would have broken his record,” said Utah Jazz president Danny Ainge, who played with Larry Bird (36th all-time) on the great Celtics teams of the 1980s and who saw up close what Abdul-Jabbar could do during two epic Finals battles.
But James had some advantages beyond being six-foot-eight and 250 pounds with guard skills and an almost comical — or comic book — level of athleticism. He started work as an 18-year-old when the league allowed players to forgo playing at least one year of basketball after their last year of high school, as is the case now.
And his apprenticeship was non-existent — he averaged nearly 21 points a game as a teenage rookie (Bryant averaged just 7.6 points a game in his first Lakers season and didn’t average 20 points a game until his fourth season, in comparison). By his third year in the league — at a stage when Jordan and Abdul Jabbar were still playing college basketball — James averaged 31.4 points a game, his career best.
As those types of seasons began to stack up on each other, and James’ durability became apparent — he led the NBA in minutes per game in his age 32 and 33 seasons — the potential for the record took shape. And when the NBA entered its current state of wide-open offence — his second-highest per game scoring average (30.4) came last season and at the moment his 30 points per game mark would be his third-best — it started to be a matter of when, not if.
“But when you look at LeBron breaking [the]record, you can see it would take someone who was playing since he was 18 years old to playing into their late 30s, so from that point of view, I’m not surprised,” said Ainge, who played 14 seasons and scored nearly 12,000 points himself. “It seems like he’s going to be breaking pretty much every record in NBA history with his greatness and his longevity and it’s a great credit to LeBron and how great a player that he is.”
So there’s the how: brilliance x longevity = almost unfathomable excellence.
But it doesn’t quite capture the why. James has four championships, four MVP awards and four Finals MVP awards, and recognition as either the best or second-best player of all time (though Abdul-Jabbar is at the table). He became a billionaire sometime during the recent off-season. He’s got three kids and multiple businesses.
He doesn’t need to spend more than a million dollars a year on the around-the-clock body maintenance required to compete with and routinely dominate world-class athletes 10, 15 or nearly 20 years younger than he is. He doesn’t have to train in and around all his other commitments beyond basketball, but he does, and he has. For two decades.
Even those who are accustomed to having to lift teams over long seasons have a hard time grasping what James has been able to do over a career.
“I don’t want to say it’s never going to be broken again but, man, that’s crazy to be able to do that,” said Toronto Raptors forward Pascal Siakam, a two-time all-NBA player who has averaged at least 21 points a game for four consecutive seasons but is more than 30,000 points behind James. “It shows the dedication to the game every single day and everyone knows what he does to be this good. Obviously he’s gifted beyond measure, not like a lot of people out there, but he does the little things. It’s great that somebody like that can continue to get better and play for that long and be able to achieve something like that.”
The drive is as remarkable as the talent or the skill.
“That type of longevity, it has to be more than just the physical. It has to be more than just lifting weights. That’s a lot of mental stamina over a long period of time. It has to be a challenge. You’re talking about a guy who’s been in the spotlight since the eighth grade and he’s 38 years old. I couldn’t tell you [what the secret is],” said Suns head coach Monty Williams. Williams played with San Antonio Spurs legend Tim Duncan, who played for 19 seasons, stands 16th in scoring with 26,494 points and is considered one of the top 10 players of all time.
“Tim and I used to work out together a ton, and the one thing I realized with him is he understood that [he]‘gets’ to play basketball. It wasn’t a job for him. My moment with Tim, it was at Alamo Stadium [in San Antonio]. We’re working out and it had to be high 90s, and we’re on the football field stretching after we ran on the track and he just said, ‘man, we get paid to do this.’ And my lungs was coming out of my head. I was like ‘this dude is different.’
“You realize these guys, they have a different approach to it all. They all look at it that way. They get paid tonnes of money, they probably have tonnes of it saved up and it just doesn’t matter to them. They just love playing basketball.
“There’s a lot of people who love the gym, but I think those guys have something different. Because once you’ve made a certain amount of money it can diminish your love for the game or your love for the sacrifice I think those guys, they’ve embraced it all and they’re able to overcome the injuries and all the stuff that comes with it. It has to be more than just lifting weights and working out and getting up shots. You have to have something else that drives you.”
It could, of course, be simpler than that. For LeBron James, basketball has always been a place of joy, comfort and excitement, a haven while growing up as the son of a teenaged single mother in Akron, OH. Even now, as one of the most famous and wealthy athletes in the world, the game is still fun. He’s still among the best in the world at it, so why stop now, especially when he’s as effective in year 20, almost, as he was in year 15, 10 or five?
“I think that in life in general [people]like doing what we’re really good at. Like, I was around Ray Allen for a long time [25th in scoring and No. 2 in NBA history in made threes]. He loved to be in the gym shooting,” said Ainge. “He loved it, he sweated, he worked hard at it, and he focussed on it…. but I think, in general, guys like LeBron love to play. He’s great a basketball. He’s special, he’s unique. Tom Brady [was] playing quarterback into his 40s. People love doing what they’re great at.”
There’s no sign of James’ greatness diminishing. He’s said his goal is to play in the NBA with his son, Bronny, who is a senior in high school, so the soonest they can become the league’s first father-son combination would be 2024-25.
James might put the scoring record away for good by then.
Even if James cuts his output — let’s say 25 points a game for two 60-game seasons after this one — it’s easily conceivable he’ll reach 42,000 points. Would that mark be unbreakable?
Well, 23-year-old Dallas Mavericks star Luka Doncic — who became the youngest player in NBA history to reach 8,000 points earlier this season — would need to average 2,000 points a year for 21 seasons. The best he’s managed for a single season so far is 1,847, though he should top the 2,000-point mark this year, his fifth season. In other words, the most prolific scorer in the NBA now is already well behind the pace James set and maintained so long ago.
Like an astronaut from generations past, James is taking the NBA record book places no man has gone before. And chances are, he’ll be alone above the rest for decades to come.
