NBA\u2019s career scoring leader<\/a> and the first player in history to play 23 seasons.<\/p>\n\u201cIt wasn\u2019t a goal of mine to come into the season, miss the first 14 games and say, \u2018OK, I can be an All-Star,\u201d James said after scoring 22 points in the Lakers\u2019 112-110 loss to the Knicks in his\u00a032nd career game at Madison Square Garden.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just wanted to get back to playing the game at a high level I knew I was capable of once I kind of worked the rust off of missing preseason, training camp, my summer workouts, which I\u2019ve never done in my whole career. So I didn\u2019t think about the All-Star Game, to be honest.\u201d<\/p>\n
James has come on strong since his birthday on Dec. 30 and joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, the Hall of Famer he surpassed to become the career scoring leader, as the only players with multiple All-Star selections after age 40.<\/p>\n
James\u2019 selection sparked some debate \u2014 which rarely happened for most of his streak that began in 2005 \u2014 after players such as the Clippers\u2019 Kawhi Leonard and James Harden, and Houston\u2019s Alperen Sengun were not selected.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course he deserves it,\u201d said teammate Luka Doncic, who was voted in as a starter. \u201cHe\u2019s playing at a top level still at that age. It\u2019s incredible to share the floor with him.\u201d<\/p>\n
James, who missed last year\u2019s game because of injury, is also the career leader in points and minutes in the All-Star Game. He can now add to those totals in the Feb. 15 game at the home of the Los Angeles Clippers.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe coaches voted, right, so mad respect to the coaches and them seeing the way I\u2019m still playing at this latter stage of my career,\u201d James said. \u201cAnd to be able to be an All-Star means a lot to my family, people that have been following my career, my LeBron faithful. They\u2019ve been following my journey and it\u2019s always rewarding just from a humbling standpoint to be able to be rewarded for what you put your work into.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James earns his 22nd consecutive All-Star appearance, this time as a reserve. NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 For…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269826,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,140658,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-269825","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-lebron-james-all-star","10":"tag-news","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269825","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269825"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269825\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269826"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269825"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269825"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269825"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}