Giannis Antetokounmpo will need far more than five more years
Giannis Antetokounmpo will need far more than five more years
Giannis Antetokounmpo will need far more than five more years to become the all-time leading scorer.
Giannis Antetokounmpo expressed yesterday his ambition to become the NBA’s all-time leading scorer — and to do so within five years. However, with simple math, this seems impossible to happen so soon.
At the moment, the Greek Freak ranks 42nd on the league’s all-time scoring list with 21,002 points, while LeBron James is first with 42,250.
The Greek international turns 31 on December 6 and needed 13 seasons to reach 21,000 points, while “the King,” who turns 41 on December 30, is in his 23rd NBA season.
If LeBron James were to stop scoring right now (which of course will not happen, as he will continue playing at least until the end of the season), for Antetokounmpo to surpass him within five years, he would need to play all — that is, all 82 — regular-season games each of those years and average 51.8 points per game.
In his first 13 NBA seasons, Giannis has played an average of 67.2 regular-season games. If he maintains that average for the rest of his career, he would need to average 31.7 points per game for an entire decade to surpass the number of points LeBron James has now. If he wants to achieve it in eleven years, his average could… drop to 28.8 points per game.
Therefore, a five-year window to break LeBron James’s record is essentially mission impossible. Even over ten years, Giannis Antetokounmpo would need remarkable consistency — even beyond his prime — and would also have to avoid injuries in order to threaten the historic milestone held by the Lakers superstar.
