No athlete in professional sports has ever lived up to the hype quite like LeBron James. On the cover of Sports Illustrated as a high school junior in 2002, dubbed the “heir to Air Jordan,” James is on the precipice of breaking perhaps the NBA’s most hallowed record some two decades later—just the latest awe-inspiring accomplishment in a legendary career overflowing with them.
Before James surpasses Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the league’s all-time leading scorer this week, Kevin Durant shared why the Los Angeles Lakers superstar and his longtime personal rival is basketball’s standard bearer of sustained individual excellence.
“You gotta play 20 years, and from the second you step into the league, you gotta score,” the Brooklyn Nets’ franchise player said of the record that will soon be James’, per The Athletic’s Joe Vardon. “He averaged 20 points his first year, 27 his second and like 31 his third, so you gotta be scoring. You can’t start off scoring 17 points your first four or five years, and that’s what makes LeBron even more special. He didn’t waste any time when he got into the league.”
Durant, of course, didn’t waste much time when he entered the professional ranks with global fanfare, either. He averaged 20.3 points per game as a 19-year-old rookie with the Seattle Supersonics, earned his first scoring title two years later and won his only MVP in 2013-14, averaging a career-best 32.0 points per game.
Like James, not even the inevitable effects of age and wear and tear have slowed down Durant. He’s averaged 29.0 points per game since joining the Nets in the summer of 2019, mere weeks after suffering a torn Achilles in the NBA Finals during his Golden State Warriors swan song–an injury it was easy to assume would mar the back half of his prime.
Not even a truly singular scorer with the rare longevity of Durant has a realistic chance at catching James in career points, though. He’s currently 16th on the list with 26,684 total points, almost 12,000 points shy of James—or some six injury-free, star-level seasons from catching him. It’s conceivable Durant finishes his career as basketball’s third leading scorer ever, but he won’t be passing James barring a catastrophic injury that abruptly ends the latter’s surreal extended prime in his late 30s.
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“He was ridiculous, man, and every basketball player should be looking up to him for that,” Durant said of James.
Just like every basketball player, Durant included, will soon be looking up at LeBron on the all-time scoring list.