LeBron James surpasses Michael Jordan as NBA's all-time playoff scoring leader
Michael Jordan might be the greatest basketball player of all time, but the NBA's playoff scoring crown belongs to LeBron James.
James surpassed Jordan's 5,987 postseason points on a 3-pointer late in the third quarter, his 29th point of Game 5 and 5,989th in his playoff career, on the way to a 135-102 Cleveland Cavaliers win over the Boston Celtics. Now, James and the Cavaliers prepare for his seventh straight trip to the NBA Finals.
https://twitter.com/cavs/status/867928878525825025
There is one asterisk on James' scoring record — the first round of the playoffs was best-of-five for Jordan's entire career, while the opening round has been best-of-seven during James' run. Combine that difference with LeBron's long playoff runs (and all the series that have gone the full seven games in his career), and James has played in 212 career playoff games to Jordan's 179.
His Airness still owns the all-time playoff points per game record at 33.45; James is fifth (28.25), trailing Allen Iverson (29.73), Jerry West (29.13), and Kevin Durant (28.44).
LeBron made more history shortly after he surpassed Jordan, passing Manu Ginobili for third on the all-time playoff 3-point shooting leaderboard:
https://twitter.com/NBATV/status/867929627213389825
James, who entered Thursday night's game averaging 32.3 points (while shooting 40.4 percent from 3), 8.0 rebounds, 6.9 assists, 2.1 steals and 1.4 blocks in 41.4 minutes per game this postseason, finished Game 5 with 35 points, eight rebounds, eight assists, and three steals.
