The Fall of ’95: Still Defining Cleveland Sports
November 3, 2015Alec Scheiner reportedly meddling in Browns trade rumors
November 3, 2015LeBron James passed the 25,000-point plateau during Monday’s victory over the Philadelphia 76ers. He became the youngest person to reach the historic mark at 30 years, 307 days old, surpassing Kobe Bryant’s existing record (31 years, 151 days) by several months.
To celebrate the achievement, I decided to pore through Basketball-Reference.com to discover which players have assisted LeBron James the most in his career. As you may recall, James surpassed Scottie Pippen in late February for the most all-time assists by a frontcourt player with 6,142. I created a “Who has LeBron James assisted the most in his career?” post at that time. Now, it’s time for the opposite approach.
The assist numbers will be much smaller this time around. While James now has 6,327 career assists, he only has 8,988 career field goal makes. And because he’s a star player who often creates his own shot, not many of those makes were of the assisted variety. I counted only 3,348 regular season assists to LeBron James during his 12-plus-year NBA career. You can view my Tableau worksheets here.
Here is a listing of the most assists to LeBron James during a single season. Notably, and perhaps surprisingly, many of the years were earlier in his career in Cleveland. Mo Williams’ 113 assists in 2009-10 are the most.
Here is then a listing of the players who have the most career regular season assists to LeBron James. Because of four prime years together in Miami, Dwyane Wade is the leader. But again, several former Cleveland point guards such as Eric Snow and Jeff McInnis are much higher than likely anticipated on the list.
And for fun, here is a listing of the randomest players with maximum five regular season career assists to LeBron James. It’s always amusing to wander through the play-by-plays and see these names all over again.
Here is a link to where James now stands on the NBA all-time scoring list. Note that if he averages 25 points per game for 70 more games this season, he’ll be expected to score 1,750 more points and jump all the way up to the No. 11 position. Another full season could move him into the top eight.
The most serious threat to besting James’ record as the youngest to 25,000 likely remains Kevin Durant. The Oklahoma City star would have through the end of the 2018-19 regular season to reach the age mark, but would need to average about 29 points per game and play nearly every single game to accomplish the feat. Since James was among the last high school-to-the-NBA prospects, after Durant, there might not be a serious contender to steal his crown for a long, long time.
1 Comment
I can see why Mo Wiliams wanted to (1)come back and (2)why LBJ would want him to comeback. I was surprised Mo was that high, let alone, the leader for a season all time. LBJ is a a generational player I hope now that he’s back people can appreciate the guys talent. It’s amazing. And I’m loving how coach Blatt is using him so far. I actually thought LBJ may have played a little to much last night but he did have two days off prior as well as today off too. Thank you Dan Gilbert and David Griffin for improving the bench. So far I feel the bench has been the #1 reason the team is 3-1. Three points from being 4-0.