LeBron James needed roughly 20 years in the NBA to break Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s all-time scoring record. Considering the fact that Abdul-Jabbar’s record stood for nearly four decades, any initial projections would have assumed that, at best, the eventual record-breaker would just barely scrape by that all-time mark. After all, Abdul-Jabbar averaged only 10.1 points per game in his final NBA season.
But James averaged just under 29 in the season in which he broke Abdul-Jabbar’s record. He’s at 25 per game a year later, and lest you believe he’s slowing down, his game this past week saw him singlehandedly outscore the Clippers in a 21-point fourth-quarter comeback. James may not be at his own peak, but he’s outpacing pretty much everyone else’s.
He became the first player in NBA history to score 40,000 regular-season points on Saturday in a 124-114 loss to the Nuggets. As we’ve covered, he’s not going to stop there.
Eventually, James will (probably) retire. His all-time scoring record changes by the day, but eventually, it is going to settle at some preposterously high number. The question now is… what will it be? When James eventually calls it a career, what will his final scoring tally be? That’s what we’re here to figure out. To settle on a number, we’re going to answer three questions facing the Laker great and use those answers to project a final tally.
Question 1: So when will LeBron retire?
James has given us no direct indication of how much longer he plans to remain in the NBA. “I don’t have a cap on how long I want to play,” he said in 2022. However, there are a few resources we can use as a guideline.
The oldest player in NBA history was Nat Hickey, who played two games just shy of his 46th birthday. Of course, those aren’t really relevant to us because this happened in 1948 and he activated himself as the coach of the Providence Steamrollers. The real answer here is Kevin Willis, who played until he was 44. But Willis played only 43 minutes in his final season, and he never played 30 minutes per game once in his 40’s. No,…
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