When will LeBron James become the Top Scorer of all time in the NBA?

While this post is quite different to what I usually post, I am a really big fan of statistics and working things out, as you can see in my most popular post about the growth of Bitcoin.

At the time of this post (10th November 2018), LeBron is 33 years and 315 days old (https://stats.nba.com/player/2544/) and is sitting in 6th spot, all time scoring in the NBA. LeBron has scored a total of 31,330 points so far in his NBA career, which puts him 7058 points behind the leader, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar who, now retired, is on 38,387 total points.

He has had a great career in the NBA but when will he become the top scorer of all time? Can he complete this massive task before he actually retires from professional basketball? Well I have the statistics and I can tell you that it will most likely be sooner than you think!

LeBron James’ Current Statistics

First of all, I have taken the average statistics of LeBron over his NBA career. While this will change the overall outcome, as long as he can stay fit, I believe this was the best way to determine future stats.

As you can see in the figure above, LeBron averages 27.1 points per game over his NBA career. He has played a total of 1143 games (not including the current season +12 games) and he has a total current point tally of 31,330 points (stats may be a little delayed). The most points ever scored was by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who was absolutely dominant back when he played. Kareem scored a total of 38,387 points. LeBron is a total of 7058 points off the leader.

When Will LeBron become the King?

As LeBron averages 27.1 points per game and plays on average 76.2 games per season, he will score roughly 2068 points in a total season. As LeBron is 7058 points off the top, he needs to play a total of 260 more games to reach the top spot. As we said before, he plays 76.2 games per season, this means that he only has to play for approximately another 3 and a half years to become the true points king of the NBA. That is not long at all!

How Long To Catch The Others?

As LeBron is in 6th spot, he still has a little bit of work to do to finally claim number one spot. As stated before, he average 27.1 points per game, this means that he will catch Wilt Chamberlain within 4 games and even catch Michael Jordan this season…. wow.

He will catch Kobe next season and then in 3 seasons time he will finally beat the once extremely dominant Karl Malone and Kareem. Lebron will become the true king around March 2022.

Thanks for reading!