The Miami Heat's LeBron James is 18 points away from making league history becoming the youngest players to reach 20,000 career points scored.
James was the youngest player in NBA history to win Rookie of the Year, to record a triple-double, to score 1,000 points, to score 10,000 points, to win MVP honors at an All-Star Game and now 20,000 career points.
He can surpass that milestone as early as Wednesday against the Golden State Warriors, becoming the 38th NBA player to accomplish 20,000 points in his career.
James would be the seventh-fastest to the 20,000 club, in his 726th regular-season game. Wilt Chamberlain needed 499 games, followed by Michael Jordan (620), Oscar Robertson (671), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (684), Elgin Baylor (711), and Allen Iverson (713).
"You look at how many players have come through this league, the history of the game," James said. "That 20K mark is very limited. How many guys have done that? It's very, very limited.
"It'll be big-time. I'm not going to shy away from that. I'm not a big stats guy as far as individual, but that'll be pretty cool."
Some of James' teammates believe that if he wanted too, James could have reached 20,000 points a long time ago.
"If LeBron was a different kind of player, he'd have a lot more points by now," Heat guard Dwyane Wade said. "He's so unselfish. We give him the ball enough to score more. He just won't do it. We've had the discussion. We've sat down at dinner and we both said, 'Sometimes, I wish I had it in me.' We talk about it, we joke about it, but when the game comes he's unselfish."
Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Durant and James Harden are the league's top scorers this season, shooting a combined 48 percent. James is fifth shooting a career best of nearly 55 percent.
"If you talk to all the basketball 'people,' I'm not much of a scorer," James said. "When the conversation comes up with the best scorers in the game today, I'm never mentioned. Ever. It's Kobe, it's KD, it's Melo, it was D-Wade, but they don't talk about us anymore. When you talk about scorers, I never get mentioned."
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