6 NBA Players Most Likely to Challenge LeBron James' 40K Points

LeBron James eclipsed 40,000 points against the Denver Nuggets on Saturday.

If we hadn't just witnessed it, this achievement would seem impossible. Right now, it feels like the end of the NBA is a closer landmark than someone else hitting this plateau.

To put it in perspective, LeBron will also have his 20th individual season with 1,500-plus points in a couple weeks. Among active players, Kevin Durant has the second-most such seasons with 12.

And even 1,500 scored in 20 different seasons only gets you to 30,000 total. You have to several campaigns in there with comfortably more points to be anywhere near where LeBron is right now.

Again, 40,000 just seems impossible.

But that won't keep us from trying to find the current player with the best chance to get there (even if that chance is remarkably slim).

These aren't hard-and-fast rules, but a good place to start would be players under 28 who've already banked multiple 1,500-point campaigns. Starting at (or younger than) 20 is key. An established history of durability is big too, though that's obviously harder to predict (especially for young players).

The six players below all check most (if not all) of those boxes.

Right now, Luka Dončić seems like the best bet to ever challenge LeBron's growing record (even if it's still a terrible bet in general).

Luka was 19 in his first NBA season. He's eclipsed 1,500 points in each of his first six NBA seasons. With that sixth campaign still playing out, he's averaging over 1,800 points per year.

But even if he stays around that pace, Dončić would have to play at least 22 years to catch LeBron. That would take him into his 40s. And, of course, with what seems like an exception for LeBron, every NBA player starts to see some decline at some point.

For Luka, specifically, who recently told reporters, "I feel like 40," multiple years of professional experience before the NBA and his current style could eventually take a toll, too.

Dončić's heliocentric style is taxing. It takes a lot of energy to control the majority of his team's possessions the way he does. He takes plenty of hits on his forays into the paint too. Part of why he feels 40 could be the physical punishment he's already taken.

The 25-year-old isn't showing clear signs of slowing down yet, but he may already be a little behind LeBron's pace (he was averaging 2,200 points a season through the same age), so any slippage probably dooms his shot at 40,000.

Like Luka and LeBron, Jayson Tatum started in his age-19 season, but he didn't burst out of the gates in quite the same way.

Across his first two seasons, Tatum averaged 14.8 points per game and scored a total of 2,355. LeBron had 2,175 in his second season by itself.

Still, Tatum is on pace for his third straight season with 2,000-plus points. Another 10 in a row, and Tatum will be up over 30,000 in his mid-30s.

Yes, that probably reads a little ridiculous, but any pursuit of this mark is. What Tatum may have going for him that Luka doesn't is a slightly less taxing approach to the game.

Tatum doesn't have to create as much from scratch. He gets more catch-and-shoot opportunities from deep. As far as superstars go, his game should age pretty well.

Devin Booker is a little further down the tracks in his career than Luka or Tatum, and injuries have limited his availability a bit in recent seasons.

But he's on track for his sixth career season with at least 1,500 points. LeBron (nine), Kevin Durant (eight), Carmelo Anthony (eight) and Terry Cummings (seven) are the only players who had more through their age-27 campaign (Luka already has six through his age-24 campaign).

And while he's not overly reliant on jump shooting, Booker does have a smooth pull-up and catch-and-shoot game that should allow him to score at a high rate well into his 30s. There may even be a post-prime version of Booker that averages the bulk of his points as a high-volume catch-and-shoot threat.

Ultimately, though, Booker's probably off to too slow a start to truly threaten 40,000. By the end of this season, his average for points per year will be around 1,600. That number times 20 years only gets you to 32,000.

Anthony Edwards checks a bunch of boxes for this list.

His age-19 season was his first in the NBA. That rookie campaign was the only one in which he failed to reach 1,500 points. His scoring average has increased in every season he's played (from 19.3 to 21.3 to 24.6 to 26.3).

And his brief but impressive playoff resume suggests the ceiling is even higher than he's shown in the regular season to this point.

Edwards has averaged 28.1 points in 11 postseason games. If he has a few regular seasons around 30 points per game in the near future, his potential to get to 40,000 could start to get interesting.

But that potential is also hard to forecast through just four seasons.

There's plenty that sets LeBron apart from everyone else in NBA history, but his longevity and durability could wind up being his defining strengths.

Edwards' current career high for total minutes in a season is 2,842. LeBron hit that mark 11 times. His career high for points in a season is 1,946. LeBron hit that mark 11 times.

Predicting Edwards (or really anyone) will replicate that would be, in a word, bold.

A hand injury that's sidelined Trae Young could keep him out till the Atlanta Hawks have just a few games left in the season. That'll obviously impact his point total in 2023-24.

But at 25, Young already has a 2,000-point season under his belt (he led the league in total points at 2,155 in 2021-22).

Young's also not shy about getting shots up (he's currently 21st in NBA history in field-goal attempts per game). And assuming we don't see some drastic rule changes to slow down the league's issue with foul grifting, he should continue to pile up freebies too. He's 23rd all-time in career free-throw attempts per game.

But beyond the limitations of time and the fact that he's already well behind LeBron's pace (two problems everyone here is dealing with), Young is also 6'1". In basketball, that's undersized, regardless of position. And that will make it harder for Young to total points in his 30s than it will be for everyone else here.

Alright, we're definitely more into speculation here than we were with any of the above slides. But Victor Wembanyama has already shown enough to warrant a mention.

The San Antonio Spurs rookie is starting a year older than LeBron, but he's only going to improve as a scorer. And if he maintains is 20.7 average and plays in his team's past 22 games, he'll eclipse 1,500 points in Year 1.

As he continues to improve his consistency as a jump shooter, his average and efficiency should both go up.

Of course, his 7'4" and slender frame brings some cause for concern about long-term health, but Wembanyama's unique health regimen has been engineered to keep him on the floor as long as possible.

There's no way to know if that means 20-plus seasons over 1,500 points, but he's off to a solid start.