The impression of having written at the pace of a race for several years. A stroke of the pen for each of his achievements, and here we are: LeBron James is only 158 points away from beating Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record and thus becoming the all-time leading scorer in the history of the NBA. The deadline has never been so close. As we don’t like approximations, a mini survey on THE match that might be crowned with this achievement.
Imagine the Lakers lose their next three games, LeBron James only scores 23, 26 and 19 points, then announces that he is retiring from the NBA courts. End of career in the Puerto Rican championship, race for the MVP trophy once morest Dwight Howard and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record left intact for several more decades.
As the scenario is unlikely, let’s instead study LeBron’s dynamic right now and his chances of becoming the leading scorer in NBA history over the next few weeks.
The Hollywood Boulevard crown is out of eight games in thirteen days, with an average playing time of 37 minutes per game. The hood heats up but its investment remains total. This weekend, the Lakers go to road-trip in the East to face five teams: Boston, Brooklyn, New York, Indiana and New Orleans. LeBron will have to stick to it an average of 31.6 points per game to beat Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s record during this road trip (and therefore during the last game in New Orleans). Can he? It’s funny because in his last five games, LeBron James has averaged… 31.6 points per game. Yes, 158 points all round. His opponents? The 1st, 10th, 22nd, 23rd and 30th NBA defenses. He will have to repeat once morest the 4th, 6th, 8th, 15th and 21st NBA defenses. A bit more complicated. Boston, New Orleans et Brooklyn are tough guys in the business. There will be clients to belt him – Grant Williams among others – but at the same time, with the return of Anthony Davis and the arrival of Rui Hachimura, defenses won’t be able to target just one man. The Lakers mark will also be more distributed, so all these parameters bring us to one and the same conclusion: LeBron has his destiny in hand.
During his visit to Paris, Adam Silver confided that “the match in which this happens will enjoy not only national but global television audiences, with ceremonies during and following”. No surprise there. It was hard to imagine the League throwing three confetti and a bucket of water during the post-game conference, releasing a t-shirt bearing the image of LeBron, and we’re packing up. There is an opportunity to magnify a storytelling with an international scope (and therefore to make pesos). However, barring injury, it is almost impossible for LeBron James not to beat the record for the first half of February, which includes the road-trip in the East plus five other encounters. He only needs 15.8 points per game to break the record before… le All-Star Weekend. According to an NBA reportce timing “would allow the league to use All-Star Game weekend in Salt Lake City as the perfect opportunity to honor him”. Great strength to the students who were very happy to find an internship at the beginning of the year in the offices of the NBA, and who find themselves typing from 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. to put epic music on the highlights of LeBron.
To try to calibrate the cursor right on THE match that will be the one we’ve been waiting for since Methuselah, here is a small homemade table of the odds of « LeBron bats record » for the next 10 Lakers meetings. Disclaimer : this table does not take into account the injury factor of a LeBron James very often « questionnable ».
Aye, we are pretty much fixed on the three, four games in which LeBron James has a good chance of putting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the retro. May he not luxuriate in something and throw the work of the editorial statisticians in the trash (it took us 23 minutes).
