Editor’s note: This is the Monday, February 6, edition of the “Game Day with Kevin Modesti” newsletter. To receive the newsletter in your inbox, sign up here.
Good morning. This should be the week LeBron James breaks the NBA career scoring record, either Tuesday night when the Lakers play Oklahoma City at Crypto.com Arena or Thursday when they host Milwaukee. Southern California News Group writers have been looking at the developing story from all angles.
Some non-Lebron headlines:
LeBron James’ pursuit of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s career record of 38,387 points has been a topic for more than a week, a month or a season.
I got curious about when people started to seriously discuss James as a contender for Abdul-Jabbar’s crown. At least in the digital archives of my home newspaper, the Los Angeles Daily News, the first time the two men and the record were mentioned together in a story was more than a decade ago. It turns out the first mention came from Abdul-Jabbar himself in an interview with Mark Medina, then the Daily News’ Lakers beat writer and now with NBA.com, who asked if anyone could break Kareem’s most famous record.
“Sure, but somebody is going to have to play pretty close to 20 years and be the offensive focus (of his team) and be someone the coach wants to take a lot of shots,” Abdul-Jabbar said in a story that appeared Nov. 15, 2012, before his statue was unveiled outside then-Staples Center. “Who knows who is going to last that long? LeBron and Kobe (Bryant) can certainly score and might do it. But most people tell me they’re making too much money and won’t play that long.”
LeBron, playing in Miami at age 27, was only about halfway to Kareem’s record regular-season total at that point. Kobe, 34 in 2012, was within 10,000 points but would retire in 2016 with 33,643.
Kareem was right: LeBron has needed to play 20 seasons to get here, and, um, yes, his coach still wants him to take shots.
Kareem also was wrong: Oddly,…
Read the full article here
