LeBron James recently became the NBA’s second-highest scorer in history, when he surpassed Karl Malone this weekend. LeBron now sits just one position behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Despite being one of, if not the greatest scorer in history, Michael Jordan is only 5th on the list. But a closer look at the number of games he played shows that Jordan would be at the top spot had he played more games.
Michael Jordan scored 32,292 points in 1072 games in his career. That would give him a career average of 30.12 points per game. If he were to play the same number of games as LeBron James, 1364 to be exact, he would have a total of 41,026 career points with that same average, a little less than 3000 points over Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who has played almost 500 games more than Michael Jordan.
Jordan clearly has played fewer games than any other player in the top 5 of the NBA’s scoring list. And another factor to take into consideration is the fact that Jordan actually retired from the NBA twice, once in 1993 and the other time in 1998. Had Jordan not walked away from the game on two separate occasions and continued playing till 2003, perhaps he would be the all-time leading scorer with a large margin.
But on the other hand, an argument could be made that Jordan’s hiatuses from the game in 1993 and 1998 allowed his body to recover, and he was able to play at a high level when he returned. And perhaps if he had played consecutively till 2003, his body would not have been able to withstand the load, and he would have seen a significant decline in his scoring numbers as time went on.
