NBANBAWe’re celebrating LeBron’s 40th birthday with 40 facts and figures that attempt to capture just how preposterously great he’s been
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By Zach KramDec. 30, 1:17 pm UTC • 8 min
LeBron James celebrates his 40th birthday today. And though the one-time “Chosen One” is finally showing some signs of slippage, he’s more than fulfilled that promise. After two decades, he’s still extending an extraordinary career that has no precedent in the NBA annals. LeBron debuted at 18, received MVP votes at 19, and remains one of the NBA’s premier talents at 40. He’s 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 played into their 40s, and none have averaged more than 14.6 points per game at that age. LeBron’s up at 23.5 per game—61 percent higher than second place—to go along with eight rebounds and nine assists every night.
He’s still chugging along, and still adding to the most impressive statistical résumé in NBA history. Let’s celebrate that résumé today. Here is a birthday gift fit for a King: 40 fun facts for 40 years of LeBron.
1. The most basic LeBron statistic might be the most important: He’s scored more points than any other player in NBA history, at 41,131 and counting.
2. That’s a preposterous total. It means LeBron has more points by himself than many multiples of Hall of Famers put together. To use one 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 19, and before turning 20, and before turning 21, and so on, all the way through 40.
4. LeBron has scored 30-plus points 72 times since turning 37 years old, most recently on Christmas against the Warriors. That’s more than the next two players on that 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’s 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 naturally leads into LeBron’s ongoing streak. LeBron has scored at least 10 points in 1,250 consecutive regular-season games, dating back to January 6, 2007. Michael Jordan has the second-longest double-digit scoring streak, at 866 games—nearly five full seasons short 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, in addition to 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.
More on LeBron James and the Lakers
More on LeBron James and the Lakers
10. LeBron’s point total is boosted by the fact that he’s seventh in career 3-pointers, with 2,466. His slow march up that leaderboard reflects his development 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 catch up to 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 scoring champion even if all his 3s counted as 2s. Take 2,466 points away from LeBron’s tally, and he’d 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 greatest players (75 plus one extra because of a tie) in league history. Among the 66 players on that list who are retired, the median career point total is 20,210 points—an excellent total befitting a long, productive career. Well, LeBron has more than double that average.
13. Put another way, we could chop LeBron’s career in half and he’d still have more points than most of the best players in NBA history.
14. In fact, let’s do just that: Chop LeBron’s career in half. Famed baseball statistician Bill James once wrote of the late, great Rickey Henderson, “If you could split him in two, he’d have two Hall of Famers.” With the possible exception of Tom Brady, there might not be any athlete in American sports history who fits that maxim better than LeBron.
Consider LeBron’s résumé at the time that he left the Miami Heat, after the 2013-14 season: four MVP awards; 10 All-NBA appearances (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/assists totals in their whole careers.
16. The player whose entire career best resembles that list of LeBron’s post-Miami accomplishments is actually, fittingly enough, Wade, who made eight All-NBA teams (two First Team); won one 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 basically matched him in his age-30 season and older.
17. After 16 points-focused stats, let’s forget about buckets for a bit and move on to other categories. LeBron says his scoring has never defined him, after all, because he “always wanted to be a triple threat, to be able to rebound, assist, and be able to score, as well.” Naturally, he’s 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 has the best combination of non-points stats, too.
20. Back to points—because LeBron isn’t the scoring king in the regular season only. He also has the most points in playoff history (8,162) by a huge margin.
21. The gap between LeBron and second-place Jordan in playoff points is larger than the gap between Jordan and 13th place.
22. Steph Curry’s had an outstanding playoff career, right? Four titles, six Finals trips, a perennial participant and an elite player for more than a decade. He’s 11th in career playoff points. And he could double his total and still fall short of LeBron’s.
23. Only eight other players in NBA history are even halfway to LeBron’s playoff points 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 even if he’d never scored in the Finals.
25. Let’s run through some more playoff stats. LeBron has the most games played in playoff history, with 287, and he’s never missed a single one of his team’s postseason contests; he’s 287 for 287 in postseason availability.
26. LeBron, by himself, 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 multiple Finals Game 7s.
28. LeBron has been incredibly clutch in his postseason career. According to Basketball Reference’s buzzer-beater database, LeBron has five game-winning buzzer-beaters in the playoffs. In chronological order: against the 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 opponents. That’s 35 percent of all players in NBA history, according to an analysis of Stathead data. He’s faced more than one-third of the all-time player pool by himself.
31. LeBron is undefeated against 379 of those opponents, though most of those matchups naturally come from small samples. There are four opponents who never defeated LeBron in double-digit tries: 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 those opponents is his whopping 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 Bobcats—though you, savvy NBA reader that you are, might have been able to guess that LeBron dominated Charlotte’s players most thoroughly over the course of his career.
33. But I’d wager you could take a thousand guesses and still not correctly identify the player who has defeated LeBron the most times without losing. That player is … drumroll, please … T.J. Leaf!
As a member of the Pacers, Leaf played LeBron five times from 2017 through 2019, and he won all five. Leaf has played in China since 2022, so he probably won’t ever return to sully his perfect record against the King. I hope he brags to his grandkids someday.
34. LeBron’s worst record against an opponent he faced at least 20 times is 8-17 versus 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 that 2020 bubble romp makes up for all those earlier losses.
35. Famously, LeBron has 27-7-7 career averages, but no actual games with exactly 27 points, seven rebounds, and seven assists. However, he’s 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, he’s now nudged that figure up to 7.503, which rounds up to 8. And he does have a pair of 27-8-7 performances in his game log.
36. LeBron also has 39 different games in which he’s 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 full seasons instead of individual games, LeBron’s track record remains without parallel. He has the most All-Star nods in league history and by far the most All-NBA honors, with 20 apiece. His All-NBA lead is so large that he’d rank 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 31 years of age—and then he made eight more teams in a row, as the oldest player each time.
39. Over the last three seasons, LeBron has been at least a decade older than the average for the other 14 All-NBA honorees.
40. That most recent berth, at 39 years old in 2023-24, made LeBron the oldest All-NBA player in league history. But here’s what brings that feat full circle: LeBron is also the youngest All-NBA player in league history. It’s a fitting celebratory 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.
Zach writes about basketball, baseball, and assorted pop culture topics.
