Jay Skapinac: “LeBron James has scored some arbitrary amount of points in his never-ending quest to become basketball's ‘GOAT’, a designation he continues to fall hilariously short of despite all of those stats. On Saturday night, he finally reached a goal that took 21 years of stat-padding on predominantly all layups and dunks.
What exactly about his legacy does this change? Oh sure, in today's day and age there are a plethora of corrupt media sycophants who have been jock-sniffing and disseminating the LeBron propaganda for over two decades and counting now. Of course, they are his ignorant and delusional fan base -- the vast majority of which know absolutely nothing about any other era outside of this one. They will no doubt be on a never-ending siege to inundate every square inch of your social media feeds with worthless LeBron counting stats and metrics as they endlessly pleasure themselves to these hollow box score stats along with the unabashed fanboys masquerading around as ‘journalists’ touting some tired and laughable fake GOAT case. A case which is constructed on a house of cards atop of foundation of unparalleled ‘longevity and durability.’
But if you really dig into the context of LeBron's career, you cannot escape the fact that these longevity metrics have come in the face of an era of undeniable statistical enhancement with league-wide scoring experiencing a meteoric rise over the course of LeBron's 21-year career.
The league average in his rookie season of 2003/2004 was just 93.4 points per-game, which is the lowest since the 1976 ABA/NBA merger. Those nightly scoring averages have shot all the way up to 115.2 points this season, which is the highest in modern NBA history. A result of the NBA's strategic assault on defense, litigating competition on that end of the floor out of the sport since the early 2000s.
This was likely the trajectory of the NBA regardless of what the league offices did as this new generation of players started replacing their predecessors -- a crop of soft, entitled losers that can't be bothered to strain themselves defensively, and in general lacked the level of competitiveness that defined the eras that came before them. Free movement around the court and to the basket came with almost no impediments as the years have gone by throughout LeBron's career.
Despite all of his scoring accomplishments, he has still displayed a relatively minuscule skillset. Something that was apparent in his first seven years in Cleveland when he shot 68% from 5 feet and in, while he made just under 36% from beyond 5 feet. Averaging it out for those first seven seasons in Cleveland, LeBron was shooting just 47.2% from the field overall. A number which has increased significantly for the remainder of his career.
From the 2011 season -- his first in Miami -- spanning all the way to the 2024 league year, James is now shooting nearly 52.5% from the field during that time. That is five percentage points higher than his first seven seasons with the Cavaliers. Now, I know what you're thinking, this must just be because LeBron has been ‘improving’ his game and getting better at his craft... Well, you may be thinking that, but you'd be wrong. Actually, it just means LeBron has had to systematically surround himself with the perfect assortment of players in order to space the floor to a point where defenses were incapable of clogging the lane. Aiding him on this front of course was the aforementioned changing dynamic of the league and dwindling defensive effort levels in general which started taking effect right around that 2012 NBA season. This ensured LeBron the ability to make more easy shots from 5 feet and in.
For his 21-year career now, LeBron James has attempted 11,586 of his 29,027 career shots from within 5 feet of the basket, which is just about 40% of his total shots attempted. On those such shot attempts he has a field goal percentage of nearly 71%, while to date he has made just over 37% of all shots outside five feet, which is essentially on any shot other than a layup or dunk. Yet we are perpetually inundated with these narratives of the alleged ‘efficiency’ of LeBron James. But DeAndre Jordan has the highest career shooting percentage in NBA history at 67.5%, and he also has the highest ‘effective field goal percentage’, while Rudy Gobert has the highest true shoot shooting percentage in league history. All the while the alleged ‘greatest shooter ever’, Steph Curry, is not top five in any of those metrics. But of course, we have to factor in the difficulty level of the shot attempts that Steph Curry is taking versus the kinds of shots Rudy Gobert and DeAndre Jordan are taking. But for some reason the context of LeBron James’ scoring is never factored in.
Being the all-time leading scorer in NBA history or reaching 40,000 career points does not necessarily make one the ‘greatest scorer’. In fact, James has only led the league in scoring ONE time in 21 years. He isn't top five in most career 40, 50, or 60 point-games. What this scoring milestone does mean is that he has experienced unparalleled durability and longevity required to reach these scoring thresholds.
And there sure has been a lot of speculation as to the ways LeBron has ‘allegedly’ attained this level of durability, with Kevin Garnett becoming just the most recent high-profile personality to level some accusation against James, saying that LeBron is on that ‘new juice’. Recently unredacted federal documents pertaining to the 2013 Biogenesis steroid scandal has implicated LeBron James' longtime friend and business partner Ernest ‘Randy’ Mims as a customer of the clinic. Also implicated in the documents was David Alexander, who served as LeBron's and LeBron's wife's personal trainer during James' stint in Miami. Nothing to see here though, just coincidences!!
At the end of the day, it's not about counting the stats, it's about owning the moments. All of the other historical greats who are routinely discussed in the GOAT conversation have mastered that, while the career successes of the self-proclaimed ‘King’ in the moments that really matter will always be outnumbered by his failures.”
Listen to YouTube sports documentarian Jay Skapinac of the YouTube channel Skap Attack blast ‘fraud king’ LeBron James on the heels of James becoming the first player in NBA history to amass over 40,000 career points.
James is accused of ‘stat-padding’ for 21 years towards becoming the no. 1 scorer in league history and overcoming a ‘relatively minuscule skillset’ as a player by taking advantage of an era that has seen defensive strategy and prowess effectively demobilized by the league office in order for the game to seem more 'entertaining.'
Check out the segment above as Skapinac discounts the idea of LeBron being known the ‘greatest scorer ever’, saying his delusional sycophants in the media will continue pushing LeBron propaganda with these hollow counting stats, and trying to fool casual NBA fans into believing LeBron's hollow ‘success’ is otherworldly.
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