Will Anyone Ever Break LeBron's Scoring Record?

1410 games 53 742 minutes twenty seven thousand eight hundred and twenty nine shots and nearly 20 years later LeBron James has scored more points than anyone else in NBA history once believed to be an unbreakable record broken and with LeBron still going strong one can only wonder where this scoring record could end up and if LeBron's new record will ever be broken and I know every time a record is broken that Numark becomes the unbreakable record only to be broken years later just like all the ones that came before it but will LeBron's scoring record truly be an unbreakable one and if not who could possibly be the player to do it [Music] news Prodigy is it yes absolutely [Applause] today's video is brought to you by hellofresh looking for an easy way to eat well and save money cut back on the expensive takeout and delivery and get started with hellofresh you will love how fast easy and affordable it is to whip up a restaurant quality meal right in your own kitchen with meals ready quicker than delivery no matter your lifestyle or meal preferences hellofresh has recipes sure to please everyone at your table I don't know how to cook for years I just cycle through the same basic meals I learned how to cook in college it was pathetic but then hellofresh brought me into the light from calorie smart or carb smart to veggie or family friendly hellofresh has countless different meals and variations of ingredients that not only have me eating healthier than ever before but I'm also saving time and money and no longer will you have to go to the store and struggle to find specific ingredients that you don't have readily available at the house because hellofresh's pre-portioned ingredients and easy to follow recipe cards mean you can get a delicious home-cooked dinner on the table without all the time consuming meal planning or prepping and right now hellofresh has a killer deal going on to help you get started just go to hellofresh. com and use code Jimmy highroller65 for 65 off plus free shipping that's hellofresh. com code Jimmy highroller65 for 65 percent off and free shipping foreign the NBA was a whole lot different than it is today from the gear to the rules and even who is interested in the game of basketball at the time most sports fans would rather witness Ted Williams hit dingers than sit in a hot gym and watch a bunch of guys get their cardio in but even in its infancy the NBA still came down to that one thing scoring and in 1947 no one could score the ball better than this guy Joe folks the NBA's first bucket getter with unshakable confidence and a silky smooth jump shot Joe became the first record holder for the most points in an NBA career with 7021 but Joe's record wouldn't last thanks to a young and up-and-coming talent by the name of George Miken in 1952 George Michael would surpass Joe's scoring record and become the first NBA player to surpass 10 000 career points five digits a historic milestone for the league but it would only be two seasons after miken's retirement that his record would also fall this time to the all-time great talent of Dolph Shays in 1958 Shays would go on to hold the record for six years and Elevate the total to over 18 000 career points a massive jump from the previous record but Dolph's time as the NBA's leading scorer was a brief one because in 1964 just one season before retiring the great Bob Pettit Eclipse Shay's previous record and became the first NBA player to surpass the 20 000 Mark establishing a new record of 20 880 career points a record that should have held up for many years to come if it wasn't for this guy one of the greatest scores to ever play the game and a player that would redefine basketball wiltz was such an Unstoppable score that he not only shattered the all-time record but he did it in just seven seasons and once Wilt obliterated the previous record he would spend the next seven seasons piling up a scoring total that was almost inconceivable at the time the first player in NBA a history to pass the thirty thousand point mark finishing his career with 31 419 points in 1974.

by the time will retired there wasn't a player within 5 000 points of him his record safe for many many years to come it wasn't until a decade later that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar set a new all-time scoring record in 1984 with this sky hook and through unwavering consistency in a 20-year long NBA career Kareem would take the scoring record to a place that no one ever thought it could go on April 23 1989 Kareem would score the final regular season points of his career bringing the all-time scoring record to 38 387 reporters players and coaches at the time and ever since calling the record indestructible safe from being touched or disturbed for as long as the game existed it would take a nearly perfect player designed to play the game at the highest level with Ultra Elite scoring ability unmatched consistency and a career that spans across decades he would have to stay healthy and avoid the sharp decline late in his career that every athlete inevitably faces it couldn't possibly happen in theory This Record could be broken but in reality this player just didn't exist and then LeBron James showed up and changed all of that combine a generational scoring Talent with the size and strength of an ox the speed of a point guard and the mind of a basketball Savant and tireless discipline matched with a love for the game to continue to push and climb 20 years into his career and we have found that player LeBron James has officially become the NBA's all-time leading scorer but long before LeBron's inevitable climb as the NBA's all-time leading scorer he was just another young Talent with a whole lot to prove the only thing standing between him and basketball immortality was 38 388 points oh my this was the first time I had ever watched LeBron live I was just a kid and I faintly remember hearing the name LeBron James in the Years leading up to this moment the hype everyone talking about him he was in commercials and on billboards but this was my first memory of him actually playing basketball it was quite the first impression and immediately I knew this was my guy I was officially a fan of the NBA and a fan of LeBron James and this poster on Tim Duncan was the 6329th point of LeBron's career the idea of him one day breaking the all-time scoring record was not even on the table yet that wouldn't happen until a decade later [Music] around 2017 the idea of LeBron one day becoming the all-time leader in points began to float around it wasn't a matter of if he would break the record but when the earliest instance I could find of LeBron being mentioned for the all-time scoring record was in an article by John Hollinger all the way back in 2009 in this article John used the formula to try and predict when NBA records could possibly be broken and who might break them and 14 years ago the most likely candidates to break Kareem's record were Kobe Bryant LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony another article was written by Adam formal in 2015 which had multiple projections and calculations on when LeBron could break the all-time scoring record and with scary accuracy each model predicted that LeBron would break the record sometime in 2023 this model in particular narrowed down the date to sometime in early 2023 but if you look at the trajectory of LeBron's career we should have saw this coming long before we crunched the numbers because LeBron was the youngest player in NBA history to reach 1 000 career points surpassing the point total just 41 days after his 19th birthday LeBron was also the youngest player to reach 2 000 career points and 3 000 career points and 4 000 and 5 000 and every single Career Point Milestone all the way up to his record-breaking total LeBron's path to scoring the most points in NBA history was set into place the moment he stepped onto an NBA court now is this scoring record a testament to LeBron's dominance and sheer ability or is this record a demonstration of longevity or is it both in the NBA 20 points per game has been the standard for a good or possibly even great score depending on what era that player played in 20 points a game may not sound like much these days but the list of great players to average 20 throughout their careers include Dirk Nowitzki Paul George Tracy McGrady Kawhi Leonard Paul p Pierce and DeMarcus Cousins in fact of the thousands of players who've laced up in the NBA only 74 have a career average of at least 20 points per game now if a player averages 20 points per game and let's say they play at least 72 games this season for every season of their career how long do you think it would take that player to even touch LeBron's record 22 Seasons maybe 24 seasons no a player averaging 20 points per game every year while only missing 10 games a season would reach LeBron's scoring total somewhere towards the end of his 26th season in the NBA but that's what it would take to reach LeBron's current record the man is still one of the League's leading scorers with no signs of slowing down this scoring record is not just some feat demonstrating how long LeBron has been playing in the league it's evidence of his absolute dominance on the game for two decades so really all anyone would have to do to beat this record in the future is score the ball better than anyone in the history of the NBA and play the game longer than anyone in NBA history ever has and yeah sure they could break this new scoring record because the volume of LeBron's scoring is just as impressive as the Persistence of his scoring are you all familiar with piston Center Jalen Duren young guy solid player he hasn't done anything notable in his NBA career yet except he is the first and currently the only player in the league that is younger than LeBron's NBA career LeBron made his NBA debut on October 29 2003. Jalen Duren was born November 18 2003. LeBron has been getting NBA buckets for longer than this NBA player has been on this Earth this isn't just longevity this is superhuman in fact the last time LeBron failed to score double digits in a regular season game was all the way back in 2007.

his famous streak of double-digit scoring now at 1140 games which just sounds like an impossibly large number but to really grasp just how long LeBron's been on the streak here's a chart of the longest current double-digit streaks in the NBA here's LeBron all the way at the top with 1140 and let's work our way down until we find the next longest active streak it's not in the thousands it's not nearly 800 or 700 still not even close at 500. keep going keep going and stop with an active streak of 109 consecutive games Joel embiid has the second longest streak of game scoring double digits which means at his current pace and if LeBron's streak ended today and bead could break LeBron's consecutive double-digit scoring record sometime during the 2041 NBA season and I think we could add this to the list of records that will never be touched for the rest of time so with LeBron breaking the once unbreakable record what will his new record end up being when it's all said and done LeBron has set on multiple occasions that he wants to and feels capable of playing into his early 40s he's also said that he wants to play with his son in the NBA and that his ultimate goal is to win a championship with his son which gives us a rough timeline of his last years in the league next season will be bronny's freshman year in college and he'll more than likely have to play at least two years of college ball before he has a real shot of making it to the NBA so that means bronny's first season in the league will be the 2025-2026 season which puts LeBron's final season as roughly the 2026-2027 NBA season now time for the hard part how many points will LeBron average throughout his last four seasons in the league well here is the overall trajectory of his points per game over the last 20 years and as you can see from the data LeBron is a statistical anomaly not only has he been impossible be consistent for 20 Seasons but over the last two seasons his scoring average has actually increased which just confirms my suspicions that he was in fact made in a lab but these numbers don't tell the whole story because in order to average these numbers LeBron has had to fight off injuries and fatigue in recent years which makes the trajectory of his total points each season look like this his aging becoming a bit clearer from this perspective this current season has been a bit of an outlier since he's been chasing the all-time scoring record but if we take the information we have and try our best to factor in the variables that will dictate the next few years of his career injuries fatigue and aging then by his last season LeBron will end up somewhere around here finishing his career averaging about 24 points per game in his final season and adding another 6 740 points to his existing record of 38 411 which brings his total career points to 40 five thousand one hundred and fifty one and we can round this number to about forty five thousand if Kareem's previous record was nearly impossible to break then I can say with 100 certainty without a shadow of a doubt that we will never see anyone break LeBron's scoring record in our lifetime I mean this total is so massive it almost doesn't even make sense excluding LeBron there's only been seven players in NBA history who have even passed 30 000 career points among active players Kevin Durant is the closest to LeBron's scoring total and after 15 of some of the most prolific scoring Seasons we've ever seen Kevin Durant is still nearly 12 000 points behind LeBron which means that if LeBron James retired today at Durant's current Pace averaging about 27 points per game playing 55 games a season even if he maintained this level of production it would take Durant eight more seasons until the ripe age of 42 before he even catches up to LeBron's current career point total keep going down the list of active NBA players with the most career points and there's no one even close to being on track to beat this record James Harden's already 33 years old Westbrook is 34. Chris Paul is 37 DeRozan's 33 Steph is about to be 35 Damien Lillard's got the most interesting path here but even he's 32 years old and about 10 000 points behind LeBron at this point in his career the first player on this list that is still on the upslope of his career is Giannis but because of his slow start when he entered the league he is about 6 000 points off Pace from where LeBron was at this point in his career so it's clear that a player who will even have a shot at breaking LeBron's all-time scoring record is not on this side of the leaderboard so let's take a different angle here what about the young guys with the increase of pace and offensive out put the NBA has seen over the last few seasons are there any young stars who are on Pace to catching LeBron in the future after five NBA Seasons LeBron James had already surpassed the 10 000 Career Point threshold finishing his fifth NBA season with 10 689 total career points on 27.