LeBron James became the only player in the history of the NBA to hit 10K in points, assists, and rebounds after recording his 10,000th assist earlier in the week. His career has been a long one, and his statistical dominance is quite staggering thanks to his elite court vision and passing ability at his size.
There isn’t anyone quite like LeBron in the history of the game, Isiah Thomas recently called him a once-in-a-lifetime player and a comparison to other great players makes that evident. LeBron is fast moving towards recording the 2nd most points in NBA history, he currently has over 36,000. Other players who have scored at that level though, simply don’t come close in terms of assists.
Of all the players that have recorded more than 30,000 points in their NBA careers, the closest to LeBron James’ assist total is Kobe Bryant, who had 6,306 assists in his career. That is over 3,500 assists less than James, just about two-thirds of his still growing tally. The numbers drop off even further after that, with Michael Jordan and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar both managing 5,600 which is almost 4,500 less than Bron.
Dirk Nowitzki and Karl alone never even broke 5,000 assists in their careers, which means that despite having more points than all but 2 of these players, LeBron is a far better playmaker than any of them. A lot of his career success has also been thanks to that, with LeBron being credited with making his teammates better and carrying them to success in the playoffs.
As he gets closer to breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record and even possibly reaching 40,000 career points, it’s important to understand just how staggering these achievements are. LBJ’s greatness has largely been normalized in recent years but we most definitely are witnessing history in the making as long as he’s still playing in the NBA.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6Pl-mx4apI
