John Connor
03-31-2020, 12:15 PM
more years... James Harden has an outside shot if Mike D'Antoni is his coach for another 10 years and the Rockets dump Westbrook so Harden can play alone again and just focus on scoring. But Harden would have to continue with an unprecedented scoring pace, which seems unlikely given that he is playing alongside Westbrook.
Durant could have done it but he's just lost too much time to injuries over the years and playing on Golden State for 3 years didn't help things either.
LeBron was most likely going to do it, but now it's a realistic debate. He lost basically half a season last year... this year he's losing probably another 20 games. He dropped 3000 points total over the past two seasons. Assuming he finishes out his Lakers contract and that's it, he needs to score 4301 more career points to pass Kareem. That's 2150 points per year. That's 26.2 points per game @ 82 games a season, which is probably unrealistic. Assuming that he has no injuries, which become more likely with age mind you, he's likely going to have to play at least three more years to get it done, at which point he will be a corpse compared to what he once was.
It was once all but a sure thing the record was going to fall, and now with the way things have played out, the record might stand indefinitely into the future... we just don't know... but I find it interesting.
Kareem's scoring record is one of the most marvelous achievements in sports just because the amount of longevity required to do such a thing, especially after playing in college. It's nothing short of breathtaking. It's up there with the all time best achievements in sports history.
Durant could have done it but he's just lost too much time to injuries over the years and playing on Golden State for 3 years didn't help things either.
LeBron was most likely going to do it, but now it's a realistic debate. He lost basically half a season last year... this year he's losing probably another 20 games. He dropped 3000 points total over the past two seasons. Assuming he finishes out his Lakers contract and that's it, he needs to score 4301 more career points to pass Kareem. That's 2150 points per year. That's 26.2 points per game @ 82 games a season, which is probably unrealistic. Assuming that he has no injuries, which become more likely with age mind you, he's likely going to have to play at least three more years to get it done, at which point he will be a corpse compared to what he once was.
It was once all but a sure thing the record was going to fall, and now with the way things have played out, the record might stand indefinitely into the future... we just don't know... but I find it interesting.
Kareem's scoring record is one of the most marvelous achievements in sports just because the amount of longevity required to do such a thing, especially after playing in college. It's nothing short of breathtaking. It's up there with the all time best achievements in sports history.