Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James is the NBA career scoring leader with 41,222 points in the regular season and counting. That’s nearly 9,000 more points than Michael Jordan, the league’s fifth all-time leading scorer, scored during his 15-year career, which makes sense considering LeBron is in his 22nd season.
Given the amount of time he’s played and, again, the fact that he’s the all-time scoring leader by a wide margin, one would assume that you could put almost anyone up against any NBA scoring leader and LeBron would still hold the top spot. first place. Most points on a Friday? Most points in cities with roads starting with D? More points on national television? I don’t know how you could even begin to determine this information, but LeBron is a good bet to own all of these titles.
Which brings me back to Jordan, who, despite playing almost 500 fewer games in his career, still had a scoring record over LeBron all these years: the most 30-point games in his career. Now LeBron owns it too, after his 30-point effort in the Lakers’ 119-102 win over the Hawks on Friday. That’s 563 30-point games for LeBron, to be exact, one more than Jordan’s previous NBA record.
Honestly, this says more about Jordan than it does about LeBron. He again played almost seven fewer seasons. Guy was a scoring machine. But it got me thinking about what other scoring marks, however arbitrary, LeBron might not possess. Turns out, a couple.
LeBron has by far the most 20-point games in his career with 1,257 after Friday, more than 100 more than runner-up Karl Malone, and now the most 30-point games. But as you go up the single-game totals, LeBron appears lower on the list.
He is tied with Oscar Robertson for seventh in career 40-point games with 77, which is nearly 100 fewer than Jordan’s 171 and nearly 200 fewer than Wilt Chamberlain’s staggering 271, according to StatMuse. LeBron doesn’t even have as many 40-point games as Allen Iverson, who had 79.
What about 50 point games? LeBron’s 14 are also tied for seventh all-time with Rick Barry: 114 fewer than Chamberlain’s 118 and more than half as many as Jordan’s 31. Even Damian Lillard has more 50-point games than LeBron.
This is in no way a knock on LeBron, who has always had far more facilitation responsibilities than any of these guys we just listed or, frankly, anyone else who has ever played the game. It’s something surprising. Wilt makes sense. That guy played a different sport in a different time. But personally, by now I would have thought that LeBron would have surpassed Jordan even in these arbitrary scoring categories simply by virtue of longevity.
In any case, it has happened to one more. Jordan’s 40 and 50 point marks seem out of James’ reach, which I guess is good news for all the true Jordan defenders out there.
