LeBron James: Kevin Durant could become NBA's all-time leading scorer
UPDATE: LeBron scored 33 while Durant had 25 in the Cavs' 103-100 victory.
If you see Kevin Durant slipping all around the court Thursday night when his Oklahoma City Thunder take on the Cleveland Cavaliers, it will because of the way he was buttered up by LeBron James.
While praising Durant's skills, James said Durant could well end up surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's all-time leading scorer.
"His ability to score the ball is obviously up there with the greatest to ever play," James said Thursday, via ESPN. "I know that's not in his memory bank right now, him trying to help the team get better and better, but long term he definitely can challenge that."
And there's more:
"He's a 7-footer with 6-foot ballhandling skills and a jump shot," James said. "And athleticism. It's never been done in our league. Never had a guy that's 7 foot, can jump like that, can shoot like that, handle the ball like that. So it sets him apart."
For the record, Durant, 27, actually is listed at 6-9 and has 16,056 career points. Abdul-Jabbar finished with 38,387. That puts Durant 22,331 points behind. If Durant were to maintain his current scoring average of 27.3 — highly unlikely as he gets older, right, Kobe? — he would catch Abdul-Jabbar in about 817 games, or approximately 10 full seasons from now.
Also for the record, can we just all agree that the phrase "score the ball" is highly annoying?
