40 stats for LeBron James’ 40th birthday

NBA NBAWe’re celebrating LeBron’s 40th birthday with 40 facts and figures that try to capture just how absurdly great he’s been

LeBron James celebrates his 40th birthday today. And even though that one time “Selected” finally showing some signs of slipping, he has more than delivered on that promise. After two decades, he is still extending an extraordinary career that has no precedent in NBA annals. LeBron debuted at 18, earned MVP votes at 19, and is still one of the NBA’s premier talents at 40. He has spent more than half of his life as one of the best players in the best basketball league in the world.

Only 21 other players have topped the 40s, and none have averaged more than 14.6 points per game. struggle at that age. LeBron is up to 23.5 per game — 61 percent higher than second — to go along with eight rebounds and nine assists nightly.

He’s still chugging along, still adding to the most impressive statistical resume in NBA history. Let’s celebrate that resume today. Here’s a birthday present fit for a king: 40 fun facts for 40 years of LeBron.

1. The most basic LeBron stat might be the most important: He has scored more points than any other player in NBA history, with 41,131 and counting.

2. It’s an absurd total. That means LeBron has more points alone than many multiples of Hall of Famers combined. To use a particularly personal example, LeBron has more career points than Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh combined.

3. He achieved this record through unprecedented longevity and consistency. LeBron has the most points of any player in NBA history before turning 19and before turning 20and before turning 21and so on, all the way through 40.

4. LeBron has scored 30-plus points 72 times since he turned 37, most recently on Christmas against the Warriors. That’s more than the next two players on the list (Karl Malone, with 43, and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, with 28) combined.

5. As a further point of comparison, LeBron’s old friend Kevin Love – a likely future Hall of Famer with more than 15,000 career points – has 72 30-point games in his entire career. And LeBron matched him after turning 37.

6. In 1,520 career regular-season games, LeBron has scored double-digit points in 1,512 of them, or 99.5 percent. He has been stuck in single digits just eight times.

7. Seven of those single-digit totals came when he was still a teenager, meaning LeBron has failed to reach double-digits just once in the last two decades

8. That obviously leads into LeBron’s ongoing streak. LeBron has scored at least 10 points in 1,250 consecutive regular-season games dating back to Jan. 6, 2007. Michael Jordan has the second-longest double-digit scoring streak at 866 games — nearly five full seasons shy of LeBron’s record. Kevin Durant has the second-longest active streak at 209 games – more than 1,000 shy of LeBron.

9. You know what else happened that week in January 2007 besides the start of LeBron’s streak? Steve Jobs introduced a groundbreaking new product to the world. Yes, LeBron’s 10-point streak is older than the iPhone.

10. LeBron’s point total is boosted by the fact that he is seventh in career 3-pointers with 2,466. His slow march up that ranking reflects his evolution from a paint-based, slashing scorer—he was a 33 percent 3-point shooter through his first nine seasons—to a knockdown shooter as the sport evolved around him.

11. LeBron’s 3s helped him pass Abdul-Jabbar on the all-time scoring list, as the former scoring king sank just one 3-pointer in his career. But here’s the wild part: LeBron would still be the career champion although all his 3s count as 2s. Take 2,466 points away from LeBron’s numbers and he would still be 278 ahead of Kareem.

12. In 2021, a blue-ribbon panel selected members of the NBA’s 75th Anniversary Team, a collection of the 76 best players (75 plus one extra due to ties) in league history. Among the 66 players on this list who are retired, the average career points total is 20,210 points – an excellent total befitting a long, productive career. LeBron has it more than double the average.

13. Put another way, we could cut LeBron’s career in half, and he would still has more points than most of the best players in NBA history.

14. Actually, let’s do just that: Cut LeBron’s career in half. The famous baseball statistician Bill James once wrote of the late, great Rickey Henderson, “If you could split him in half, he’d have two Hall of Famers.” With the possible exception of Tom Brady, perhaps no athlete in American sports history fits that maxim better than LeBron.

Consider LeBron’s resume at the time he left the Miami Heat, following the 2013-14 season: four MVP awards; 10 NBA games (eight first team); two Finals MVPs in five Finals trips; 23,170 points, 6,086 rebounds and 5,790 assists. In NBA history, only five players besides LeBron have at least 23,000 points, 6,000 rebounds and 5,700 assists. It bears repeating: He reached those thresholds halfway through his career.

15. What about the back half of LeBron’s career? Starting with his return to Cleveland, LeBron has earned 10 more All-NBA appearances (five first team); two more Finals MVPs in five more Finals trips; and 17,961 points, 5,319 rebounds and 5,471 assists. Only 12 other players in NBA history have reached those points/rebounds/assist totals in their entire careers.

16. The player whose entire career best resembles that list of LeBron’s post-Miami accomplishments is actually Wade, who made eight All-NBA teams (two first team); won a Finals MVP and three titles in five Finals trips; and finished his career with 23,165 points, 5,701 assists and 4,933 rebounds.

And LeBron pretty much matched him in his age-30 season and older.

17. After 16 point-focused stats, let’s forget about buckets for a bit and move on to other categories. LeBron says his scoring, after all, never defined him because he “always wanted to be a triple threat, to also rebound, assist and be able to score.” Obviously, he is the greatest triple threat in league history. There are three members of the 8,000-rebound/8,000-assist club: LeBron, Jason Kidd and Russell Westbrook.

18. But LeBron is the only member of the 9,000/9,000 club … and the only member of the 10,000/10,000 club … and the only member of the 11,000/11,000 club

19. LeBron is also one of only three players on record with at least 2,000 steals and 1,000 blocks in his career, joining Hakeem Olajuwon and Malone. LeBron has the most points in NBA history, and he also has the best combination of non-point stats.

20. Back to the points – because LeBron is not only the scoring king in the regular season. He also has the most points in playoff history (8,162) by a wide margin.

21. The gap between LeBron and Jordan for second in playoff points is greater than the gap between Jordan and 13th.

22. Steph Curry had an outstanding playoff career, didn’t he? Four titles, six finals trips, a perennial participant and an elite player for more than a decade. He is 11th in career playoff points. And he could double his total and still missing LeBron’s.

23. Only eight other players in NBA history are even halfway to LeBron’s playoff point total: Jordan, Kareem, Kobe Bryant, Shaquille O’Neal, Tim Duncan, Kevin Durant, Malone and Jerry West.

24. Here’s the wild part, playoff edition: LeBron would still have the most points in postseason history although he had never scored in the final.

25. Let’s review some more playoff stats. LeBron has played the most games in playoff history with 287, and he has never missed a single one of his team’s postseason contests; he is 287 for 287 in postseason availability.

26. LeBron alone has been to more Finals than 27 of the NBA’s 30 franchises. Only the Celtics, Lakers and Warriors have more championship appearances than LeBron.

27. LeBron has also won two Finals Game 7s, one as a Cavalier against the Warriors in 2016 and one as a member of the Heat against the Spurs in 2013. Robert Horry is the only other player since the NBA-ABA merger in the mid-70s to win more final game 7s.

28. LeBron has been incredibly clutch in his postseason career. According to Basketball Reference’s buzzer-beater databaseLeBron has five game-winning buzzer-beaters in the playoffs. In chronological order: against magic in 2009, against the Pacers in 2013, against the Bulls in 2015, against the Pacers again in 2018, and against the Raptors in 2018.

29. That’s the most in NBA history. Jordan, who won three playoff games at the buzzer, is the only other player with more than two

30. Across the regular season and postseason, LeBron has played against 1,750 different ones opponents. That’s 35 percent of all players in NBA history, according to an analysis of Stathead data. He has faced more than a third of the all-time player pool alone.

31. LeBron is undefeated against 379 of those opponents, though most of those matchups naturally come from small tests. There are four opponents who never defeated LeBron in double-digit attempts: Chris Douglas-Roberts (0-14), Andrew Nicholson (0-12), Wesley Johnson (0-11) and Jordan Hill (0-10).

32. Looking at larger samples, LeBron has faced 316 players at least 20 times. His best record against these opponents is his massive 30-1 mark against Kemba Walker, followed by 24-1 against Cody Zeller, 21-1 against Michael Kidd-Gilchrist and 19-1 against Matt Carroll. Poor Bobcat – although you, seasoned NBA reader that you are, might have been able to guess that LeBron dominated Charlotte’s players most thoroughly during his career.

33. But I bet you could take a thousand guesses and still not identify the player who has defeated LeBron most times without losing. That player is … drum roll please … TJ Leaf!

As a member of the Pacers, Leaf played LeBron five times from 2017 to 2019, and he won all five. Leaf has been playing in China since 2022, so he will likely never return to ruin his perfect record against the King. I hope he brags to his grandchildren one day.

34. LeBron’s worst record against an opponent he faced at least 20 times is 8-17 against Danny Green, who once tormented him as a member of the Spurs. But of course, LeBron also won a title with Green as a teammate, so the 2020 bubble makes up for all the previous losses.

35. Famously, LeBron has a 27-7-7 career average, but no actual games with exactly 27 points, seven rebounds and seven assists. However, he is no longer a true 27-7-7 man; Although LeBron entered the 2024-25 season with a career average of 7,497 rebounds per game. match, he has now moved that number up to 7,503, which rounds up to 8. And he has a couple of 27-8-7 performances in his game log.

36. LeBron has too 39 different games where he has been one point, assist and/or rebound away from a perfect 27-7-7. He’s bound to get the exact trio one of these days, right?

37. When it comes to entire seasons instead of individual games, LeBron’s track record remains unmatched. He has the most All-Star nods in league history and by far the most All-NBA honors with 20. His All-NBA lead is so large that he would be first even if his four third-team berths had never happened.

38. There’s that longevity theme again: LeBron was the oldest member of the three All-NBA teams in 2016, at age 31 — and then he made eight more teams in a row, which the oldest plays each time.

39. Over the past three seasons, LeBron has been at least a decade older than the average of the other 14 All-NBA honorees.

40. The latest spot, at age 39 in 2023-24, made LeBron the oldest All-NBA player in league history. But here’s what brings that feat full circle: LeBron is too youngest All-NBA Player in League History It’s a fitting note to end on: LeBron is the best youngster in NBA history and the best veteran, and perhaps the best at every age in between.