LeBron James reached another career milestone last night, his 400th 30-point game.
Last night, although superstar small forward tallied 33 points in a Cleveland Cavaliers loss, his scoring output allowed him to reach a milestone that only five other players have reached: 400 career 30-point games.
James becomes the first player to reach the milestone since Kobe Bryant.
The other five players to reach 400 career three-point games are Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Karl Malone and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Jordan leads the charge with 562 career 30-point games while Malone is in second place with 435 games, Bryant falls in third place with 431 games and Abdul-Jabbar is in fourth place with 429 career 30-point games. James is averaging 26.7 30-point games per season at this point, so he’ll likely be second on the list by the end of next season.
Chasing Jordan’s number of 30-point would require the King to play until he’s 40.
The next closest an active player comes to reaching the 400-game plateau is Carmelo Anthony (who is in his 15th season), who has 271 career 30-point games. Kevin Durant, who many consider to be a candidate for the best scorer in NBA history, has 262 career 30-point games and is in his 10th NBA season. To reach the 400-game plateau, he’d likely need to play 17 seasons.
So with that said, James may be the only active player who’ll find himself listed with that pantheon of great scorers. In fact, he’ll likely fall second on that list to Jordan.
It’s always interesting to see where James ranks in scoring feats like these because he doesn’t classify himself as a scorer. However, when you watch James play, it’s so easy to see how he’s an unstoppable scoring force. He’s too big, fast and strong on his way to the hoop (or in the post) and has a feathery touch around the rim. When his outside shooting is on – and it has been for five out his last seven seasons (including this season) – he’s unstoppable.
James is just 8 points away from being just the 7th player to reach 29,000 career points. He’s currently 7th all-time in career points and in second place on the active list (falling behind Dirk Nowitzki’s 30,362 career points).
His scoring average of 27.12 points per game is the 5th best of all-time and he’s one of six players in NBA history to average at least 27.0 points per game (Jordan, Chamberlain, Durant, Elgin Baylor and Jerry West). He’s second on the active list (to Durant’s 27.18 points per game).