A big game Thursday against the Boston Celtics would help Cleveland Cavaliers star LeBron James pass Hakeem Olajuwon and move into the top 10 on the NBA's all-time scoring list.
Given he's still playing at an elite level, James can pass many more of the game's greats in years to come.
Can he get all the way to the top of the leaderboard, passing Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant and even breaking Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record of 38,387 points?
By the end of the season, provided he stays healthy, James should surpass Shaquille O'Neal's total of 28,596 points, moving into seventh place on the all-time list.
With the help of an invention by another James (Bill) and my SCHOENE projection system, let's assess LeBron's chances to move from top 10 to No.1.
Favorite toy method
Career totals are a much bigger deal in baseball, whereas per-game stats typically take priority in basketball. To try to estimate the chances of baseball players reaching various benchmarks, pioneering sabermetrician Bill James developed the "favorite toy" method to project, based on the player's age and benchmark performance over the past three seasons.
This method suggests LeBron James -- who will turn 32 on Dec. 30 -- can be expected to score a little more than 10,200 points the rest of his career. That would push him past Karl Malone, who is 10,013 points ahead entering Thursday's action, for second all-time but leave him behind Abdul-Jabbar, who is 11,472 points ahead.
More interesting than the projected total, however, is the way favorite toy estimates the percentage chances of a player getting to a given mark. Based on his benchmark, favorite toy views James passing Jordan (5,377 points ahead) and Bryant (6,728 points ahead) as a sure thing, with the maximum possible 97 percent probability (favorite toy's concession to the possibility of serious injury).
As far as James passing Malone, favorite toy sees that as basically a toss-up, with a 52 percent chance of happening. And, as you'd expect from the projected total, favorite toy makes James a slight underdog to surpass Abdul-Jabbar, giving him a 39 percent chance of becoming the NBA's top scorer ever.
Projecting James with SCHOENE
That's essentially all the information the favorite toy method is designed to provide. To get more details on what the rest of James' career might look like, we can turn to my SCHOENE projection system. Using his 2016-17 SCHOENE projection as James' actual level of play, I can continue to run season-by-season projections for the remainder of his career.
The trickier part is projecting James' playing time. I assumed he'd average 77 games a season -- probably a bit optimistic as he ages -- while using the average minutes per game played at the same age by Karl Malone, Moses Malone and Tim Duncan. Those assumptions yield the following projected stats for James through 2024-25, when he'd turn 40:
Through four games, James is underperforming his 2016-17 projection, averaging just 20.5 points per game in 36.5 minutes a night. Odds are he'll improve that, having last averaged fewer than 25 points in 2003-04, his rookie season at age 19.
If James' career played out exactly as projected, here's when he might reach various milestones.
April 2017: James passes O'Neal.
February or March 2018: James reaches 30,000 career points.
February 2019: James passes Wilt Chamberlain (31,419 points).
November 2019: James passes Jordan.
April 2020: James passes Bryant.
March or April 2021: James becomes the third player to 35,000 career points.
February 2023: James passes Karl Malone.
November 2024: James passes Abdul-Jabbar to become the NBA's all-time leading scorer.
The SCHOENE projection has James finishing with 38,991 points, 604 more than Abdul-Jabbar.
Of course, when we start projecting so far into the future -- tacking an additional nine seasons on James' career, including the current one -- forecasting becomes exponentially more difficult.
Major injuries are impossible to predict. When he reached 30,000 points at age 34, Bryant seemed to have an excellent chance of reaching 35,000 points and passing Malone for second all time. Lo and behold, after rupturing his Achilles late that same season, Bryant scored just 2,026 points before retiring.
Beyond injury, there's also the matter of how long James wants to play. SCHOENE's projections forecast him as a sub-star by 2022-23, when James will turn 38. Will the possibility of becoming the NBA's all-time leading scorer be enough for James to keep playing after his prime?
Given all that, Abdul-Jabbar doesn't need to worry too much about James passing him for now. But if James continues on his current path, setting a new scoring record is a legitimate possibility.