LeBron James is quickly climbing up the NBA’s all-time scoring list and reached another milestone Tuesday night in a Los Angeles Lakers win.
He has now eclipsed the 36,000-point mark and is roughly 2,000 points behind Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the all-time record.
He still has to pass Karl Malone as well, but should do that later this season.
James reaching 36,000 points also meant he continued an NBA scoring record that is almost tough to believe.
On Tuesday, LeBron James became the youngest player to reach every round number milestone in points: 1K, 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K, 6K, 7K, 8K, 9K, 10K, 11K, 12K, 13K, 14K, 15K, 16K, 17K, 18K, 19K, 20K, 21K, 22K, 23K, 24K, 25K, 26K, 27K, 28K, 29K, 30K, 31K, 32K, 33K, 34K, 35K and 36K. pic.twitter.com/cag553r4lm
— ESPN Stats & Info (@ESPNStatsInfo) December 29, 2021
James is the youngest player to hit every single round-number scoring milestone.
It began with his first 1,000 points and has never stopped.
Will anyone ever break this record?
A Tough Record To Break
It is going to be nearly impossible for anyone to break this record for several reasons.
The first is that James came out of high school and got a head start as a teenager in the NBA.
It would take the NBA changing its rules about high school players for someone to show up as young as James did and start dominating right away.
But there is another hurdle as well.
That is being as great as James from the start of a career.
LeBron joins Kareem & Karl Malone in the 36K POINT CLUB!
Check out some of @KingJames scoring milestones as he became the youngest in NBA history to score 1K, 2K, 3K, 4K, 5K, 6K, 7K, 8K, 9K, 10K…you get the point 👑 pic.twitter.com/51smw51HbP
— Ballislife.com (@Ballislife) December 29, 2021
He showed up as the next Michael Jordan and has lived up to the hype and more.
James averaged over 20 points per game as a rookie and was up over 31 a night two years later.
He carried the Cleveland Cavaliers on his back and he needed to score that much every night for the team to have a shot at success.
That means another generational talent would need to enter the league and dominate his team’s scoring attack right away to get on James’ pace.
Even then, he did everything so young that it’s unlikely anyone touches these round-number scoring records.
Next up for James is continuing this trend at 37,000, 38,000, and so on.
He should be able to take home the scoring record next season and will only continue to build his total from there.
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