Why LeBron Breaking Kareem’s Record is About Much More than Scoring

ESPN Daily

ESPN

Sports

4.6 • 3.9K Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2023

⏱️ 35 minutes

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Summary

It’s only a matter of when, not if, LeBron James breaks the all-time NBA scoring record, surpassing the current mark of 38,387 points held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar… which has stood for longer than LeBron has been alive. At times, it seems as if the career paths of both LeBron and Kareem have run parallel to each other. Both were among the best high school players in history, both infamously changed teams…and both are considered to be two of the greatest players we have ever seen. Despite that, their relationship has seemed non-existent and almost adversarial at times. So with James on the cusp of breaking one of the most hallowed records in sports, one held by his most impactful critic, we turned to Brian Windhorst…who has been covering LeBron longer than anyone on the planet. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Brian Winhorse, do you remember the first time you saw LeBron James score a point in a basketball game?
0:07.0	I do. I saw him in his first high school game when he was 14 years old.
0:15.0	Brian Winhorse covers the NBA for ESPN and he has been reporting on the career of LeBron James for nearly 25 years.
0:23.0	I was a junior in college at Kent State University working as a part-time or at the Akron Beacon Journal,
0:29.0	where I was allowed to cover some high school sporting events on the weekends.
0:35.0	This was a Friday night, December 3rd, 1999, and LeBron was playing a road game at a suburb of Akron Ohio, Cairo Gafalz, for his team,
0:46.0	St. Vincent St. Mary.
0:48.0	He scored 15 points that night, which is good for a freshman, playing in his first game.
0:57.0	They won easily, and his head coach, who had been head coach at the Division I college level, said to me that he could be the best player he has ever coached,
1:08.0	and I thought he was maybe exaggerating a little bit, but it turned out he was right.
1:14.0	And the reason why, obviously, all of this feels more relevant than ever is that right now, the guy that you scouted,
1:24.0	that you reported on from the very beginning, is breathing down the neck, the considerable neck of Kreme Abdul Javar,
1:31.0	and this all-time NBA record of 38,387 points.
1:38.0	And so, right now, Brian, when do you four years and counting later? You're thinking about what?
1:47.0	But this is not really a scoring record that he's breaking. It's a longevity record.
1:53.0	LeBron would be the first to tell you he's not the greatest scorer in NBA history.
1:57.0	There are better shooters, there have been better slasers, there have been better post-up guys, surely even better free-throw shooters.
2:05.0	But nobody has been this good for this long.
2:11.0	We all remember in the last dance, one of the more indelible moments for me was Michael Jordan sitting on that couch in a hotel suite somewhere,
2:21.0	basically saying to the camera crew, I'm done after this year. I'm mentally and physically fried.
2:27.0	I'm ready for getting out of this life, you know? So, you know when you get to that point, I'm there.
2:34.0	And we know reservations at all, I'm there.
	...

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