SAN FRANCISCO (KRON) — LeBron James broke the NBA’s all-time scoring record Tuesday night in front of a jam-packed crowd inside Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles.
James, who is 38 years old and in his 20th NBA season, hit a fadeaway 15-foot jump shot with seconds left in the thirdquarter to pass fellow Los Angeles Laker Kareem Abdul-Jabaar’s mark of 38,387 career regular-season points.
Last season, Golden State Warriors superstar Stephen Curry broke the NBA record for career 3-pointers made (regular season). Clearly, Curry gets buckets.
Now, that begs the question: how many more points does Curry need to catch James?
As of Wednesday, Curry is 39th all-time in scoring with 21,183 career points. Five active players have more career points than the two-time MVP.
- LeBron James: 38,390 (1st)
- Kevin Durant: 26,684 (14th)
- James Harden: 24,233 (27th)
- Russell Westbrook: 24,125 (28th)
- Chris Paul: 21,413 (38th)
- Stephen Curry: 21,183 (39th)
Curry, who will turn 35 next month and is in his 14th NBA season, needs 17,208 points to break James’ record. (That number will change as James continues to score more points this season.)
In other words…
Curry would have to average approximately 29.9 points per game for the next seven seasons, assuming he plays all 82 games each regular season.
At that pace, the two-time scoring champ would theoretically break James’ record sometime during his 21st and age-41 season in 2029-30.
Given his age and the miles on the odometer, it is unlikely Curry averages that many points a night for seven more years.
If Curry averaged 20 points a night, it would take him roughly 10 1/2 seasons (assuming he plays all 82 regular-season games) to break the record. The record would be broken sometime during his 24th season in which he would be 44 years old.
Obviously, there’s no guarantee Curry will be playing into his 40s.
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Another factor that must be considered: LeBron could distance himself from the rest of the pack if he keeps scoring at a high level into his 40s.
It’s unlikely Curry catches James, but, who knows, the Warriors superstar has defied the odds before.
