Editorial

LeBron James Becomes NBA’s All-Time Leading Scorer, Surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)

Seth Roy Contributor
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LeBron James has made history.  

James surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Tuesday to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer. He netted a fadeaway jumper over Kenrich Williams of the Oklahoma City Thunder to break Abdul-Jabbar’s record. 

As of Tuesday night, James now has 38,891 points throughout his career and counting. 

Following James breaking the scoring record, the game stopped to honor him. Crypto.com Arena would play a video montage of him on the jumbotron, while his family met him at center court. James would then take a picture with Abdul-Jabbar and deliver a speech to thank everybody who has been a part of his basketball journey. 

“To my beautiful wife, my daughter, my two boys, my friends, my boys, my family, my mother … man, everybody that’s ever been apart of this run with with me,” he said. “I just want to say, I thank you so much because I wouldn’t be me without y’all.”

Then he finished his speech with a comical ‘F bomb’ before the game returned to action.  

I don’t see anyone breaking LeBron’s record any time soon. The closest active player to James right now is Kevin Durant. Durant is a few points shy of 27,000 throughout his career. He’ll need to score at least another 13,000 points to come close to dethroning James. Durant is four years younger than him and may play a little longer so there’s still a chance he could catch up, but it seems very unlikely.

If you ask me, James is a top-five basketball player of all time, if not top-three. I tend to struggle with the belief that he’s better than Michael Jordan or Kobe Bryant. That’s where I typically draw the line while having conversations about who the greatest players of all-time are. 

Michael Jordan has two more championships than James. Jordan has also won ten regular season scoring titles throughout his illustrious career, compared to James having just one. On top of that, MJ was named league MVP one more time than James.

Not to mention that Jordan’s “Space Jam” film was 10 times better, too. 

In comparison to Kobe Bryant, not only did Kobe win more titles and have a much deadlier offensive game than James, but he was also selected to six more All-NBA Defensive teams than James. Kobe would battle through aches and pains on game day just so he wouldn’t run the risk of letting a hard-working fan down who paid for a ticket to see him play.

Kobe would never participate in the fiasco that is “load management” like James does. 

For those who aren’t familiar with load management, it’s when an NBA player sits out a game (or multiple) while being perfectly healthy just to stay in tip-top shape for the postseason. LeBron has taken time off with load management multiple times throughout his career and I personally believe it’s weak every time he does it. Bryant even laughed at the mere thought of load management one time during an interview in 2019. 

Based off of grittiness and toughness alone, Jordan and Bryant were better players than LeBron is. (RELATED: Jason Whitlock: ‘LeBron James’ Is Using ‘Racial Division’ To ‘Reshape America’ Like ‘Communist China’)

Congratulations to James for achieving this milestone, but he will forever be a level below Bryant and Jordan in my eyes.