Is Luka Going to Beat LeBron’s Scoring Title? Simply Put: No
LeBron is on his way to becoming the All-Time Points leader. Luka has the skill to surpass him. But he doesn’t want to because he wants to become a farmer.
On Sunday, LeBron James joined Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the only players in NBA history to score 38,000 or more regular season points.
He reached his 38,001st point with a mid-range jumper at around the 5-minute mark in the first quarter of a game against the Philidelphia 76ers.
The King now only needs 364 points (as of Sunday’s game) to pass Kareem on the All-Time points leaderboard and it seems he’s going to achieve it sooner rather than later -unless he takes the lazy route and takes his time to reach the goal.
With 39 games left in the season for him, all he needs to really do is average 9.3 points a game, which should be super easy for him seeing how he’s averaging 29 points per game as a 38-year-old.
However, he’ll most likely try to get it as quickly as possible because I don’t think LeBron is the type of guy to take the easy route.
But do you know who is?
One of the reasons why I’m saying this is to be salacious and to ruffle some feathers.
The other reason why I’m (jokingly) saying this is because Luka has been playing phenomenally.
He’s been on a scoring terror, putting up numbers that we’ve only seen from the legends.
For the first half-ish of the season, he’s averaging 33.8 points a game. And he had a stretch of 5 games in December where he went full Super Luka Level 3 and averaged 45.6 points per game.
That’s bananas!
But -and here’s the reason why he is taking the easy route, sort of- he doesn’t see himself playing basketball for a long time. He, unlike Lebron, just wants to play a reasonable amount of time.
This is what he relayed after he helped his Dallas Mavericks defeat the Lakers last Thursday.
After the victory, Luka was about to be asked if he’ll beat LeBron’s scoring title by the end of his career. He said he probably won’t because he doesn’t intend on having a long career like LeBron’s.
Via ESPN:
“If you're saying me, there's no way," Doncic said before the question was even asked, "because I'm not playing that much…
"I don't know about 20 years," Doncic said after a 32-point, nine-rebound, nine-assist performance in a home win over James' Lakers that afternoon. "That's a long time to play basketball. I'd rather go back to my farm in Slovenia."
Final Thoughts
Luka is a great player and I’m sure he’ll accomplish a lot of things in his career. Heck, I’m sure he’ll be this generation’s most talented and dominant player.
He’ll probably win a few rings and a few MVP titles.
But the one legacy he won’t have is LeBron’s mental and physical durability because all he wants to do is get a handful of rings, retire, and become a farmer (much like Thanos). He doesn’t have the same aspirations as LeBron.
However, Luka could just be joking.
Only time will tell.