LeBron James might be running out of records to chase.
He already has gotten plenty of them: most points scored, most seasons played, most minutes played, most All-NBA selections, most All-Star selections, most field goals made, most field goals attempted, most playoff games, most playoff points, highest career earnings … James has all those marks, and probably many more.
And that list doesn’t even include ones that James’ Los Angeles Lakers teammate Austin Reaves adds to the tally — highly nuanced and perhaps made-up categories like most sneakers worn and most shoestrings used.
“He says a new stat every day about me,” James said.
James took outright possession of yet another record Saturday night, when he started the Lakers’ game in Orlando and officially played in the 1,612th regular-season game of his career — breaking a tie with Robert Parish for the most in NBA history.
It’s an obvious tribute to James’ longevity. He is in his 23rd season, one more than Vince Carter’s previous record. Entering Saturday, there are 79 players who have logged NBA minutes this season and weren’t even born when James played his debut game in the league on Oct. 29, 2003.
“It’s not like I’m like writing things down and looking at the record book and saying: ‘I’m going to get that, I’m going to get that, I’m going to get that.’ It just kind of happened,” James said. “It was not on the list of things that I wanted to accomplish.”
Everything he does now raises the bar. Every point he scores, every shot he takes, every game he plays just widens the gap a little bit more between him and everyone else on the stat lists. He has accomplished all the big to-dos on his wish list entering the league — four NBA titles took care of that — but the accolades that have come his way in recent years are ones he savors as well.
“I wanted to be the best player in this league at some point,” James said. “I wanted to be one of the greatest, if not the greatest, to ever play this game. I wanted to be an NBA champion. I wanted to possibly win rookie of the year, make All-Star appearances, win a gold medal, win some MVPs, those were some of my goals. But some of the stuff that’s just been happening over the course of the last few years has been super-duper cool.”
The records James has
A breakdown of some of the NBA records that James owns at this point:
— Points. James entered Saturday with 43,229 points. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is second on the list with 38,387.
— Minutes played: James’ total entering Saturday was 60,676. Abdul-Jabbar played 57,446 and only seven players have reached 50,000 in their careers.
— Field goals: James (15,884 entering Saturday) recently passed Abdul-Jabbar (15,837). Karl Malone is the only other player with more than 13,000 makes.
— Field-goal attempts: At 31,350 entering Saturday, James is just over 3,000 shots ahead of Abdul-Jabbar. He is not getting caught there anytime soon.
— Consecutive double-digit games: James’ streak of 1,297 consecutive regular-season games with at least 10 points ended earlier this season. Michael Jordan (866) had the second-longest such streak, and James is not getting caught here for at least a decade. Kevin Durant had the longest active streak entering Saturday at 316 games; he’d have to play until at least 2038 to catch James’ streak.
— Most award selections: The 22 All-Star selections and 21 All-NBA picks … forget it, they’re not getting caught unless Victor Wembanyama plays from now until around 2048 or so.
— Double-digit games: James has scored 10 or more points in 99.44% of his regular-season games entering Saturday, a staggering 1,602 times out of the first 1,611 appearances. He’s not getting caught there, either. (He also is the leader in 20- and 30-point games — and is tied with Allen Iverson for sixth most on the 40-point-game list.)
— Playoff scoring: James has 8,289 playoff points while nobody else has even reached 6,000. As is the case with the regular-season scoring number, it’s almost inconceivable to think about him getting passed on this list.
— On-court earnings: He’s up to around $580 million through this season, and that doesn’t take into account his massive on-court empire. (But with the way salaries are rising, it’s almost certain that James’ on-court earnings number will get passed and probably within the next decade.)
Where can James still move up?
No. 1 on these all-time lists might be hard to get, but James can move up a few notches in a couple of categories (assuming he returns to play next season).
— Assists: James is fourth on the all-time list and almost certainly isn’t going to catch record holder John Stockton (15,806), but he could catch Jason Kidd (12,091) early next season and Chris Paul (12,552) by the end of next season.
— Steals: Stockton’s record (3,265) is out of reach, and Paul’s No. 2 spot (2,728) and Kidd’s No. 3 spot (2,684) likely are as well. But James — currently sixth on the list — would have a chance at catching No. 5 Gary Payton (2,445) and No. 4 Michael Jordan (2,514) next season.
— Made 3-pointers: James is currently sixth and odds are that’s where he’ll be whenever he retires, unless he plays multiple seasons after this. Stephen Curry, James Harden, Ray Allen, Klay Thompson and Damian Lillard are the five names ahead of James on the 3s list; of those, Allen is the only one who is retired and he’s more than 300 ahead of James.
— Triple-Doubles: Russell Westbrook (209), Nikola Jokic (191) and Oscar Robertson (181) aren’t within reach. But James (currently fifth with 124) could pass Magic Johnson (currently fourth with 138). And this is a category where James sure seems like he’ll be passed in a few years; his current Lakers co-star Luka Doncic already has 90 triple-doubles.
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