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The LA Lakers beat the San Antonio Spurs in Texas on their fifth game of the 2020-2021 season, but this was no ordinary win for the reigning NBA Champs, it was LeBron James 36th birthday, and he achieved yet another milestone in his career to celebrate.
King James, considered by many as the best basketball player in the world right now, and best ever by others, achieved what is probably his most remarkable milestone so far, regarding his longevity and consistency, he scored 10+ points for 1000th consecutive regular season game. To put it in other words, LeBron James has not scored less than 10 points in an NBA regular season game since 2007, on January 5th, to be more specific, 14 years ago. That day he scored 8 points, had 9 rebounds and 5 assists, as the Cavaliers beat the Milwaukee Bucks.
In fact, James has scored less than 10 points in only 10 games in his entire career, 6 of those were in the 2003-2004 season, when he was a rookie. If we take the playoffs in consideration, LeBron had 2 more games where he did not reach 10 points, one in 2011 and one in 2014, both with the Miami Heat.
Counting regular season and playoff games, it’s been a grand total of 1529 games in his career, up until the day of the win over the Spurs, which means that LeBron James has scored 10+ points in over 99% of his career games.
Who is behind LeBron James in this stat?
There is only one active player on the list when we check who else figures in this remarkable stat. Kevin Durant, by December 29th, 2020, the day that James achieved this new milestone, had a streak of 562 straight games with 10+ points, which is almost half of James’ number.
Number 2 through number 4 on the list are retired players; Michael Jordan had 866 games from 1986 to 2001, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had 787 from 1977 to 1987, and Karl Malone had a 575-game streak from 1991 to 1999.
Will LeBron James reach #1 in NBA’s all-time scoring list?
With his 26 points on the Lakers’ win over the Spurs, LeBron James reached a total of 34,358 total career points, he’s third on the all-time scoring list, only behind Karl Malone’s 36.928 points and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points, the most ever.
What this means is that James is about 4000 points behind the top spot. Last season he averaged 25.3 points per game, at this rate, it would mean that he would need 159 more games averaging those numbers to be able to reach #1. Taking his age in consideration, and assuming he could slow down a bit from now on, we could say that he might need at least 200 to 250 more games averaging from 17 to 20 points per game, to be able to achieve this goal.
Is it hard? Of course, it is, James is now 36 years old and into his 18th season. Is it possible? Yes, it is, considering his consistency and stamina, and how well he takes care of his body. If the Lakers remain competitive, and James keeps up his hard work, he could take Kareem’s record.
