Speaking on his Road Trippin’ podcast, LeBron James’ former teammate Richard Jefferson made a generous prediction about his scoring record. James broke Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s NBA scoring record back in February. He has since added close to 300 points and is currently sits at a whopping 38,652 career points. Jefferson believes that LeBron James is going to score at least 45,000 in his career, and the record will not be broken anytime soon.
Advertisement
James’s longevity has been stunning, considering he is still operating at an All-Star level. At the age of 38, LeBron is expected to play for a further 3-4 seasons. This has led to a range of speculation about the number that he might end up with.
Richard Jefferson thinks LeBron James will score more than 45,000 points before retiring
When asked, Jefferson initially responded with his generous 45k number. While the achievement itself will be massive, Jefferson’s claim was met with reluctance.
This led to Jefferson’s fellow hosts Alley Clifton and Channing Frye proceeding to calculate James’s expected return. Going with an assumption that he would play at least 65 games a season and 3-4 further seasons, the group finished on 1600 as his season average in the coming years. This would mean James will score a total of around 6500 points, which is enough to lead him to the 45,000 mark:
“Never, 45,000 he is gonna end with. So 1600 points, I think he is going to play, 3-4 more years. What I am saying is that m****f***er is going to score 45. LeBron James is going to score 45,000 points. Look, we are being generous on the early, thinking it might not be pretty on the back end, so we are saying 65 games, 25 points, we know it can be more, whatever. So, that record is never going to be broken. We can say in our lifetime we are not going to see it.”
Jefferson then went on to calculate exactly how many points another player would have to average in order to break the record. Concluding that no player is going to average more than 40 for 10 seasons, Jefferson concluded that the record will not be broken in their lifetime.
Kareem was thrilled to see James break his scoring record
Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had a fascinating take on James breaking his record, according to CNBC. The Lakers legend compared his achievement to winning a billion-dollar lottery.
He claimed that James breaking his record 39 years later represented another person winning a $2-billion lottery. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar claimed that he was thrilled and that the situation might have been different when he was a younger man.
Had the record been broken just a few years after his retirement, he would have probably returned to add more points. However, Kareem was the highest scorer in NBA history for close to 40 years, which is a phenomenal achievement in itself.
