If you don’t believe that LeBron James of the Los Angeles Lakers, in his 20th season, has already amassed the greatest career in the history of the National Basketball Association, then numbers must not be your thing. On Tuesday, in a home game against the Oklahoma City Thunder, “King James” passed the legendary Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in NBA points scored, breaking what was long thought to be an unbreakable record.
James added to a list of accomplishments that one would need a scroll to read in full.
In the process, James added to a list of accomplishments that one would need a scroll to read in full. In addition to tying Abdul-Jabbar’s record of 19 All-Star nods and taking his place as the league’s all-time top scorer, James is also ranked fourth all-time in assists. To put that in perspective, no one else in the top 25 scorers is even on the top 25 list of passers. (Kobe Bryant, who ranked 33rd in assists, is the closest). James scoring that many points and making that many passes leading to points boggles the mind.
Along the way, in these polarizing times of social justice protest and right-wing backlash, James has amassed an army of haters. And not just grumpy fans clinging to Michael Jordan as their GOAT. Because he has spoken out politically — most notably against racist police violence and the agenda of Donald Trump — James has faced down, in no particular order, Trump himself, Fox News and harassment that included racist graffiti on the door of his home.
The hate hasn’t crushed him. It seems to instead have emboldened him.
The way he’s consistently fought back is something we haven’t seen from athletes before, but something befitting his cultural capital, his creative mind and frankly his net worth. When James criticized Trump for not doing a good job as president and making comments that he called “laughable and scary,” Fox News’ Laura Ingraham said he should “shut up and dribble.” So James made a documentary series with that very title about the history of NBA trailblazers and rebel athletes. Ingraham’s put-down suggested that his being vocal about injustice ruined the experience of watching him play. The electric atmosphere in Los Angeles and throughout the league proves otherwise.
Trump tried to marshal his Twitter army to isolate and attack James, but there was one problem. James’ social media presence — adding all followers together — appears to be even greater than Trump’s. (He has fewer Twitter followers than Trump, but more Instagram followers than Trump has on Twitter and Instagram combined.) This put the bully-in-chief in a weak position, where his favorite pastime — demonizing Black athletes as a form of racist theater for his base — was not nearly, in my opinion, as effective as his attacks on others.
James, in an apparent effort to explain himself, started an entertainment production company to do that while also maintaining a mutually beneficial relationship with the old-school press. All of which served to further marginalize the right-wing critiques of his words and actions. James understood that no matter what he did — even opening a school for poor kids in his hometown of Akron, Ohio — the hate would come. And he has let it fall like dust around him and continued to try and impact the world.
This is not to say that James has handled every issue to perfection or stood tall each time the public demanded it. (His reluctance to speak out when a Cleveland police officer killed 12-year-old Tamir Rice when he was playing for the Cleveland Cavaliers is a notable example.) But even that criticism is a marker of his cultural weight. Most athletes are not judged by how much political activism they engage in, nor should they be. These are athletes, and some people demand of them a level of action that they don’t exhibit themselves.
But James has shouldered the Spider-Man ethos that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Some supporters feel entitled to criticize him precisely because he has stood up and spoken out so often. That he has welcomed the weight of those expectations while producing a career that will stand the test of time, puts him in rare air that includes one-word athletes like Ali and Serena.
When James entered the NBA as a teenager, Nike created the tagline “We Are All Witnesses.” The folks doing the marketing at the shoe company may not have realized just how high they were setting the bar or how effortlessly James would clear it.
