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Source: Basketball Reference player totals data (https://www.basketball-reference.com/)

Tools: Google Sheets

Methodology: Used top 5 avg. points per season scorers plus Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (record holder). For projections, calculated each players career average points per season and average games played per season and multiplied the two to produce cumulative sums.

The "if He Didn't Have a Gambling Problem" part of the title is sarcasm.

Edit: Updated methodology section.

Edit 2: Line about "if He Didn't Have a Gambling Problem"

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How should I read this graphic to arrive at that conclusion?

Ir this is nor sarcasm (gambling problem), OP is has 0 idea what he'a on about. You just can't have a more narrow view of things than that.

Solid lines are actual career stats, dotted lines are projections using historical career stats. Horizontal line was Kareem's record

If these guys only knew they could have played for 24 seasons without any decline in skill, they might never have retired.

Ha, yes. I didn't attempt to build any atrophy in here, just simple projections.

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how is Karl Malone missing?

Elgin Baylor is obviously a problem, a flat line suddenly accelerates to a higher slope in projections, that's wrong. In fact, several lines have projections with higher slopes than their actual scoring, indicating the projections are wrong. In fact, there should be an attenuation on scoring as the projection goes forward.

Kareem was really a special case, because even has his physical skills diminished, he was still an unstoppable scorer because he could always post up and hit that sky hook. Lebron is a special case because he has not physically diminished.

PS (yeah, it's totally gambling)

Don't listen to the haters. I grew up in MJ's Chicago, and I think it's hilarious whether he was pressured to retire over his gambling or not. This is high quality shitposting

Gambling problem? Is that a joke?

This graph is not very readable, I’m sorry

be mindful of your habits because they can ruin you

The zoomed out version that I didn't post shows Elgin on pretty much the same trajectory, but he only played 11 games total in his last two seasons. And yeah, obviously there would be some attenuation in a true model but these are very basic projections. I made this for Reddit, not a publication lol.

Also, I just drew the line at top 5 avg ppg scorers of all time for the purpose of projections. Karl Malone is 11 on that last, Kobe 12

Malone has nearly 37000 points, and is #3 on your graph. A somewhat significant omission. And Kobe is 4th.

I'm actually a huge MJ fan and this was part shitpost/part actual data to show MJ is the goat. Alt title option was "Haters will say I'm a hater"

MJ was 3 yrs older than LeBron when drafted.

The projections are obviously not realistic. Every player is projected to increase their scoring rate if they kept playing compared to the last season they played. You probably should have just used the rate they scored at for their final season or fit some type of exponential function if you wanted to get fancy.

Lmao, look this amounts of coping

19th and 20th seasons, respectively, with avg scoring rates that wouldn't have surpassed the record mark by the 20th season (where LeBron and Kareem set their records), and 11th and 12th on the ppg avg. list, which excluded them from this list.

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Two true things:

1. if the Bulls team hadn’t fallen apart and MJ didn’t retire the second time, he would have passed Kareem

2 Lebron still would eventually be the scoring champion because he is not human.

Not only physically, which that in its own is truly mindboggling, but also dealing with the mental and emotional stressors of being a low key god among men. In this decade fame is even more intense. MJ bounced twice in primarily because of the mental and external stressors. This is why sustained greatness for THAT long is so absurd and difficult. Lebron is gunna scoot past and build on that lead for at least 2 more full seasons plus the remainder of this year, and he’s still averaging 30 points a game while also never being someone unwilling to share the ball. It’s just insane.

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Since you're using basketball-reference.com, it's worth noting that there is a way that you can actually use data from the site to account for projected future stats for a given player.

They use similarity scores (see here for Michael Jordan for example) to match each player with 10 additional players with similar career arcs. You can then use average over those 10 players for points scored for subsequent seasons (using only players that actually played subsequent seasons, which would fit the assumption that Michael Jordan played additional seasons). This would give a rough approximation for how many points Michael Jordan would be expected to score if he continued to play, based on career arcs of similar players.

While it's not perfect, it's far better than assuming that players would continue scoring at peak levels indefinitely.

It's wild how different things were even just 25 years ago. If I remember right for a while Jordan was basically the only athlete that did any kind of physical conditioning other than playing basketball, and he still did a lot of smoking and drinking and staying up all night.

>And he didn't take care of himself that well

It's wild how different things are, Jordan smoking and drinking in the locker room v Lebron spending like 2 million a year on his health. Cool think is Lebron is it not only gives Lebron way better longevity, it makes him a better role model too.

Nothing in the chart supports your headline, OP.

That means Jordan is still the GOAT and The GOAT likes to gamble.

>And he didn't take care of himself that well

Jordan is known as being one of the pioneers for lifting weights while simultaneously playing at a highly competitive level. At that time, lifting weights weren't seen as advantageous for a basketball player. I'd argue that he actually did take care of himself very well.

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MJ did not keep himself in shape the same way that LeBron has. So while MJ surely would be much closer, I do not believe it is likely that he would have eclipsed Kareem.

I applied your effort, OP, but without a negative second derivative this presents an unrealistic expectation of extending careers.

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My question is Kobe bc in another post I saw he shot up in like 2-3 years but then sadly passed on

An Achilles rupture will do that.

Biggest conspiracy never revealed in sports;

Why Jordan retired after the first 3 peat.

Lebron would always have the advantage in this race because he entered the NBA 3 years younger than MJ.

What are you talking about? Even if he played those two years, he's still only at 14 seasons when he retired the second time. Hell, even if he hadn't retired the first time or second time, he'd still only be at 19 seasons when he retired the third time!

Idk why there are posts like these. What ifs. Give lebron his due and that's that. I'm not a lebron fan but he did put up the numbers. He'll never be in my top 5 tho just like Kareem is not and they're 1-2 top scorers.

MJ also has an NCAA championship and an Olympic medal from when pros weren't allowed to compete, accomplishments Lebron will never match.