Los Angeles Lakers superstar LeBron James is the NBA’s career scoring leader with 41,222 regular-season points and counting. That is almost 9,000 more points than Michael Jordan — the league’s fifth all-time leading scorer — scored during his 15-year career, which makes sense when you consider LeBron is in his 22nd season.
Given how long he’s played and, again, the fact that’s he’s the all-time scoring leader by a wide margin, one would assume you could put just about any qualifier in front of any NBA scoring mark and LeBron would still occupy the top spot. Most points on a Friday? Most points in road cities that start with a D? Most points on national television? I don’t know how one would even begin to ascertain this information, but LeBron is a good bet to own all these titles.
Which brings me back to Jordan, who, despite playing in almost 500 fewer career games, still had one scoring record over LeBron for all these years: Most career 30-point games. Now LeBron owns that one, 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 LeBron. Again, he played in almost seven fewer seasons. Guy was a scoring machine. But it got me to thinking what other scoring marks, however arbitrary, that LeBron might not own. Turns out, a couple.
LeBron by far and away has the most career 20-point games 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 higher on the single-game totals, LeBron shows up lower on the list.
He’s tied with Oscar Robertson for seventh in career 40-point games with 77, which is almost 100 fewer than Jordan’s 171 and almost 200 fewer than Wilt Chamberlain’s astounding 271, per 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 is 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 just kind of surprising. Wilt makes sense. That dude was playing a different sport in a different time. But personally, I would have thought by now that LeBron would’ve bested Jordan in even these arbitrary scoring categories simply by virtue of longevity.
At any rate, he’s passed him on one more. Jordan’s 40- and 50-point marks seem out of reach for James, which I suppose is good news for all the Jordan truthers out there.
