LeBron James becomes youngest player to 25,000 career points
LeBron James has accomplished a great deal in his 13-year NBA career — enough so that individual achievement and milestones sometimes do not register as especially impressive or notable. Sometimes, though, LeBron reaches a level that serves as a reminder that we have had the privilege of watching a singular basketball phenomenon for more than a decade.
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One of those moments occurred with roughly 8:10 remaining in Monday night’s game between the Cleveland Cavaliers and Philadelphia 76ers at the Wells Fargo Center. James finished an alley-oop from Matthew Dellavedova to become the youngest player to reach 25,000 points for his career. Take a look:
At 30 years and 307 days, LeBron tops Kobe Bryant’s previous record of 31 years and 105 days (set in 2010 against James and the Cavs, incidentally). As noted by Jason Lloyd of the Akron Beacon Journal, he had previously broken Kobe’s records as the youngest to 10,000, 15,000, and 20,000 points.
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LeBron predictably took the diplomatic route to explaining how he was able to reach this milestone so quickly (via Lloyd):
“It just means that I play with a lot of great teammates and coaches that have allowed me to be in a position to be successful on the floor,” James said. “I have been around some great groups and can reap a lot of benefits.”
Yet James was the one who put his teammates in a position to succeed on Monday, dishing out 11 assists to go along with his team-high 22 points (9-of-19 FG) and eight rebounds in Cleveland’s 107-100 win. The Cavs are now 3-1 and next face the New York Knicks in a nationally televised game Wednesday night.
Meanwhile, James will continue to reach new milestones as if they were perfectly common occurrences. The same can be said of his highlights, too. This alley-oop from Dellavedova came just before the record-setting play with added style points:
The amazing thing about LeBron is that he’s done similar things so many times that the difficulty of this finish almost doesn’t even register. Let’s do our best not to forget just how good he is.
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Eric Freeman is a writer for Ball Don’t Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at [email protected] or follow him on Twitter!
