A titan at home and on the road: LeBron James’ incredible career in numbers
Here are some facts and figures to put James’ brilliant ongoing career into perspective courtesy of data provided by StatsPerform.
James has more career points than the current active rosters of five different NBA franchises: the Indiana Pacers (36,515), Orlando Magic (33,164), San Antonio Spurs (32,364), Houston Rockets (28,642) and Tuesday’s opponents the Thunder (21,900).
Including 2022/23, LeBron James has scored at least 1,000 points in all 20 of his NBA seasons, besting Abdul-Jabbar (19) for the most such seasons of all time.
James scored 23,119 of his points for the Cleveland Cavaliers, where he spent 11 seasons. This is more than the total points he has scored for the Lakers and Miami Heat combined.
Unstoppable at home and on the road
Cleveland was not just his most prolific team but also his most productive venue for scoring, unsurprisingly. He scored 11,670 points at the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland.
That is followed by his current home the Crypto.com Arena in LA (4,649) and the Miami-Dade Arena (4,613), where he spent four seasons with the Heat.
On no other court has he scored more than 1,000 points but in five other NBA venues he has scored more than 800 - proving he isn't just prolific at home.
Incredibly, James has scored 19,251 career points on the road, which is the most in NBA history, and more than the 19,139 he has scored at home, despite having played more home games in his career (home: 716, road: 694).
The team he scored the most points against are the Milwaukee Bucks (1,751). They are closely followed by the Pacers (1,743), Chicago Bulls (1,709) and Atlanta Hawks (1,707). He has scored more than 1,500 points against 11 different NBA franchises in his career.
Mr Unassisted
26,855 of James' career points were scored unassisted. Ex-Heat teammate Dwyane Wade (41) has had the most assists to James in NBA history with 776, he is followed by Eric Snow (49) with 630.
In his career, 148 different players have had at least one assist to James. The first player to have assisted James was Ricky Davis (43), whose last NBA game was way back on February 9th, 2010.
It's not just raw points that sets James apart. He also leads the NBA in playoff games played (266) and playoff points scored (7,631).
What's more, he holds the records for the most All-Star Selections (19) and All-NBA 1st Team Selections (13). With four, he is second to only Michael Jordan (6) with the most NBA finals MVP awards.
Timeless
Of the seven players to hold the all-time scoring crown starting from the end of the first NBA season (1946/47) until now, four played for the Lakers at some point in their career - George Mikan, Wilt Chamberlain, Abdul-Jabbar and James.
The other three were Joe Fulks, Dolph Schayes and Bob Pettit.
Of those players, Abdul-Jabbar has held the scoring record for the longest period: 14,187 days - almost 39 years.
When Abdul-Jabbar set the record on April 5th, 1984, the NBA was only 13,671 days old (the first game was played on November 1st, 1946).
How long LeBron will hold the record is anyone’s guess but it will take something pretty special to reach the bar he has set in his relentlessly successful career. And let’s not forget, he’s not finished yet!