Editor's note: This story was originally published on Dec. 30, 2022.
LeBron James has used a version of the following quote dozens of times over the past 20 seasons:
"I'm confident in my ability, and the best thing about it is my teammates allow me to do that."
He said this about his Cleveland Cavaliers teammates as a teenager, about his Miami Heat teammates playing alongside future Hall of Famers, again after returning to the Cavs playing with multiple other All-Stars, and now with the Los Angeles Lakers in the record-breaking phase of his career.
The implication is that James' teammates have routinely and freely allowed him to control and score the ball, a natural game plan with him on the roster. As a result, James, who turned 38 in December, has broken the regular-season record for scoring. It's a mark Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had held since six months before James was born in 1984. (When including playoff scoring, James had already slipped past Abdul-Jabbar in February.)
But the totality in which James' teammates have, in essence, stood back and allowed him to use his power, skill and ambidexterity to score more than anyone in the history of the game is perhaps undersold. If anything regarding James this deep into his career can be undersold, this might be it. Because they have really stood back.
To illustrate the point, let's start with a trivia question that even the most devoted James fans might have to take a few moments to mull over:
Who has assisted James the most in his career?
He played the most seasons with centers Zydrunas Ilgauskas and Anderson Varejao (eight each), but they aren't known for their passing. James twice played with the same point guard for four consecutive seasons, Eric Snow and Mario Chalmers, and they would be good guesses and both are near the top. He played with Kyrie Irving for three years, though James famously chided Irving at times for not passing enough.
The answer is a star-encrusted one; it's Dwyane Wade.
For those four glorious seasons in Miami (and part of one quite forgettable year in Cleveland in 2017-18), Wade and James learned how to complement each other with all of those off-ball cuts, devastating fast breaks and drive-and-kicks that became central to the Heat's run to four consecutive Finals.
It's arguable that two of the most memorable baskets of James' time with the Heat came off passes from Wade.
One, from their first season together in 2010, led to one of the most iconic sports photos of the past 20 years as Wade set James up for a dunk and then spread his arms wide to create an indelible image during a game in Milwaukee.
The second came two years later, in 2012, when Wade threw a 90-foot alley-oop pass to a streaking James in Indianapolis in a scene that resembled Joe Montana hitting Jerry Rice on a go route.
But this is a diversion. Wade set up James with an assist 361 times, per ESPN Stats & Information research.
James has more than 14,000 baskets in his (regular-season) career. The most times any teammate has ever assisted him is just 361. (As an aside, James assisted Wade 428 times, the most of any teammate in Wade's career).
This is the surprising takeaway as James nears the ultimate scoring record in the game: His greatest ally in getting baskets has been ... himself.
James has more than 8,800 unassisted hoops in his career. More than 60% of the time, he has created his own make.
He is regarded as an unselfish player -- James recently passed Magic Johnson, Steve Nash and Mark Jackson to move into fourth place all-time in assists and is one of seven players in history to amass more than 10,000 -- but when it comes to scoring, more often than not he hasn't gotten a pass to set it up.
There's more nuance to it than that. One of the pillars of James' teams has been the presence of excellent shooters who create space for him to go to work. James has played with two of the top five 3-point shooters of all time (Ray Allen and Kyle Korver) and throughout the years has played with dozens of shooting specialists to force defenses to choose between sticking to a player on the perimeter or helping when James is on the attack.
One of the things that is tracked by teams, though not officially by the NBA itself, is screen assists, which is when a player sets a screen that creates a basket or a foul. If this were tracked, Ilgauskas, Varejao and Heat teammate Chris Bosh likely would rank right at the top. As would James' current Lakers teammate Anthony Davis.
It's more complicated to track "space assists," where defenders have stayed out of James' way to remain close to a dangerous shooter. So, it's not that LeBron has scored all those baskets by himself, but all of them go into the "unassisted" file, padding his incredible total.
If there is a signature play of James' career, it is the "and-1." So often he has attacked the basket out of isolation without the need of a screen. The stat has been tracked officially since only the 1996-97 season, but James can make a case that he has the most and-1s in history, racking up nearly 1,400 during the regular season.
In the 2005-06 season, James had 107 and-1s in 79 games and drew a remarkable 362 shooting fouls, per Basketball-Reference.com -- nearly five per game -- while being called for only 16 offensive fouls.
All in all, going it alone has worked out pretty well for James -- almost 9,000 times.