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LeBron James has become the NBA\u2019s leader in career field goals. James surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar on Thursday night in Denver.<\/p>\n
DENVER (AP) \u2014 LeBron James has surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most field goals in NBA history.<\/p>\n
James hit a turnaround 12-foot jumper<\/a>\u00a0over Zeke Nnaji with 12 seconds left in the first quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers\u2019 game against the Denver Nuggets<\/a> on Thursday night.<\/p>\n The bucket gave James 15,838 career field goals in his unprecedented 23rd NBA season. Abdul-Jabbar had 15,837 baskets when the skyhook-wielding big man ended his 20-year career in 1989 as the NBA\u2019s career scoring leader. Karl Malone is a distant third with 13,528 field goals.<\/p>\n James passed Abdul-Jabbar to become\u00a0the top scorer<\/a> in NBA history\u00a0in February 2023. James was already the top scorer in NBA playoff history, and he\u00a0surpassed 50,000 career points<\/a>\u00a0in the regular season and postseason combined a year ago.<\/p>\n James has already attempted more field goals than any NBA player \u2014 31,274 entering Thursday night, including more than 7,500 3-pointers.<\/p>\n Abdul-Jabbar, the low-post virtuoso who made more than 50% of his shots in 19 straight seasons to start his career, attempted only 28,307 field goals \u2014 and just 18 of them were 3-pointers after the shot was introduced to the league midway through his career.<\/p>\n Abdul-Jabbar was a career 55.9% shooter, while James has hit 51.6% of his shots.<\/p>\n James tied Abdul-Jabbar\u2019s record with his second basket of the game, an alley-oop dunk from Luca Doncic that cut Denver\u2019s early lead to 16-7.<\/p>\n Now 41, James regularly sets NBA records for longevity and career achievements \u2014 most recently becoming\u00a0the oldest player to get a triple-double\u00a0last month.<\/p>\n Before tipoff, Lakers coach J.J. Redick compared his superstar to another iconic American virtuoso: the Boss.<\/p>\n \u201cYeah, I\u2019m a big Bruce Springsteen fan, and I would probably say his early albums really, really get me going,\u201d Redick said. \u201cThere\u2019s a youthfulness to him, you know, in energy. \u2018Nebraska\u2019 is actually my favorite album of all time. And that\u2019s very different from what he had done that far in his career. And then you can kind of see the evolution of him as a singer-songwriter. and then he comes out with the greatest hits. And you\u2019re like, \u2018Wow, this is pretty good.\u2019<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then after that he comes out with \u2018The Rising,\u2019 which is one of the most important albums of the 2000s. So, you get to the end and you\u2019re like, \u2018Holy man, this guy\u2019s greatest hits are like insane.\u2019 And LeBron\u2019s greatest hits, right? He just keeps adding to them. He just plays and plays and plays and the greatest hits, he\u2019s got a hell of a catalog.\u201d<\/p>\n Even more history awaits James later in March, barring injury: The Lakers\u2019 visit to the Nuggets was the 1,606th regular-season game of his career, putting him just five games behind Robert Parish (1,611) for the most in NBA history. James already holds the league\u2019s career record for playoff games with 292.<\/p>\n James says\u00a0he hasn\u2019t decided whether to return\u00a0to the Lakers next season, but he believes he could keep playing at a high level indefinitely. He was selected for the All-Star Game for the 22nd time in his career despite missing 18 games due to injury, precluding him from consideration for the postseason All-NBA teams.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Beacham reported from Los Angeles. AP freelance writer Ashlyn Stapleton contributed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James has become the NBA\u2019s leader in career field goals. 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