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[request] Can Kobe, LeBron catch Kareem? ESPN IN

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Can anyone top Kareem's record for career points scored? Kobe and LeBron are both in the hunt.

The stage couldn't be set any better.

Kobe Bryant enters Thursday's nationally televised battle against Cleveland just 19 points shy of a historic milestone, his 25,000th career point. He'll become only the 15th player in NBA history to reach this extraordinary mark.

The icing on the cake is that he's going up against LeBron James, who has 14,264 career points. LeBron is not only Kobe's greatest current rival but also the one player most likely to challenge him on the scoring charts over the long term.

Forget about 25,000, though. Both Bryant and James have their sights set on a greater prize, the record of 38,387 points held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Although both players are chipping away methodically, each still has a long way to go.

Can they make it? We can't say for certain, of course, but we can estimate their likelihood of doing so. As I explained nearly two years ago, I have a four-step method for determining whether a player will break a given career record, in this case for points:

Chasing Kareem: The Formula

Remaining seasons = (42 - Age)/2.2
Age is as of Dec. 31 of current season

HeightDiff = Absolute value of (Height in inches - 72)

Adjusted Remaining Seasons (ARS) = Remaining Seasons * (60 - HeightDiff)/55)

Established level = ((Year1*3) + (Year2*2) + (Year3))/6
Year 1=Total in category for current (or most recent) season
Year 2=Total in category for previous season
Year 3=Total in category for second previous season

Chance of record = [(ARS*established level)/amount needed] - 0.5

1. Determine the player's current annual production in the given category.

2. Estimate how many seasons' worth of that production remains.

3. Multiply the first two answers to estimate how many points we can expect the player to score in the rest of his career.

4. Compare that answer to the amount needed for the record and derive a percentage accordingly.

Let's take Bryant, for instance, and walk through the four steps above. (See inset box for the complete formula.)

First, we estimate his production in the category by using his stats from the past three seasons, including the current one. Prorating his 1,161 points through 41 games this season to a full 82-game campaign gives us 2,322. Also, he scored 2,201 last season and 2,323 the season before. Weighting his seasons by counting the current one three times, 2008-09 twice and 2007-08 once, then dividing by six, we find his established level is 2,282 points per season.

Second, we determine how many seasons' worth of that production remains. (Note: This is not the same thing as saying how long his career will last.) We're estimating how many equivalent years of production to expect. For example, if the formula says a player has four seasons of his current production remaining, that production could well happen over a period of eight seasons, thanks to age, injuries and whatever other deleterious effects Father Time throws at him.

The method for determining seasons remaining is two-fold. First, subtract the player's age from 42 and divide by 2.2. That's easy -- Kobe is 31, so subtracting from 42 gives us 11, and dividing by 2.2 gives us exactly five years.

We need to adjust this further by height, however, because that has a powerful impact on career length. Players who are 6-foot-10 play the most games, but staying power diminishes as a player's height moves toward either extreme. The formula to adjust for this slightly benefits Bryant, who at 6-6 is only 4 inches from the ideal, and leaves him with 5.09 seasons.

Next is Step 3: 5.09 seasons at an established level of 2,282 points a season equals an estimated 11,618 points remaining in Bryant's career.

Finally, in Step 4, we compare that 11,618 figure (prorating his current season's points again) to the 12,246 points (his prorated total at the end of this season) he would need after this season to surpass Abdul-Jabbar. Dividing the first number by the second and then subtracting 0.5 leaves us with a .449 probability -- or a 44.9 percent chance -- that Bryant will break the career points record.

This is an improvement for Bryant over two years ago, when he registered only a 30.7 percent chance. It's also a testament to his ability to continue scoring at such a high level into his early 30s, considering the algorithm expected him to slow down more than he has. As a result, he has nearly a 50-50 shot at setting the mark.

Bryant, however, isn't the only current player who registers a decent chance of breaking Abdul-Jabbar's record. Three younger players also appear to have a chance.

First is Carmelo Anthony, who at age 25 is nearly one-third of the way to Abdul-Jabbar's mark. That's pretty impressive considering he missed 52 games in his first six-and-a-half seasons, which could have cut his distance to Abdul-Jabbar's record by about 1,250 points. Unfortunately, that's part of the deal with a record of this magnitude -- it requires not only outstanding performance but also outstanding performance over long periods with little interruption.

Anthony got an early start because he entered the league at age 19, but he has further to go and a lower established level because of his injuries. As a result, my formula gives him a 10.8 percent chance of breaking Abdul-Jabbar's mark. Basically, he needs to step up his annual point output in the next few years to maintain much of a shot.

[+] EnlargeKobe Bryant and LeBron James
AP Photo/Jae C. HongKareem's career scoring record is just another title for which Kobe and LeBron may be battling.

A player who has better odds, however, is Oklahoma City's Kevin Durant. Like Anthony, Durant got an early start at age 19; unlike Anthony, he's missed only 10 games in his first two-and-a-half seasons. The main impediment for Durant is simply how far he has to go to catch Abdul-Jabbar -- he still needs 34,499 points from today forward, which is more than all but two players in NBA history have scored.

Nonetheless, Durant has a puncher's chance of hitting the mark -- 15.8 percent, according to this method. His odds would increase dramatically in the next two years if he could raise his established point level from the current 2,088 to the 2,400 range. At just 21, he's on pace to score 2,388 points this season, so it's not out of the question.

However, neither Durant nor Anthony can come close to the odds of Bryant's quasinemesis, LeBron. Although they've never faced each other in a game that truly mattered, they (and their puppet avatars) have been locked in a cross-country rivalry -- to the point that a lot of Lakers fans get upset any time they hear praise for LeBron.

In this case, James has one amazing thing in his favor: Although he's only 25 years old, he's just over 10 years away from Abdul-Jabbar's mark. By the end of this season, he projects to have 15,417 points. At his current rate, he'll hit the halfway mark late in the 2010-11 campaign, when he'll be only 26.

That said, he still has 24,124 points to go. While that may seem like "only" 10 years of production at his current established rate of 2,355 points a season, remember that 22,912 is an imposing figure as well -- it's more than the career totals of Larry Bird, Kevin Garnett or Clyde Drexler. An awesome half-decade isn't enough; LeBron has to follow it with another decade of awesomeness, and any number of obstacles could trip him up. As a result, his likelihood of catching Kareem is 33.5 percent -- far better than the odds of the other two young gunslingers, but slightly less than Bryant's.

Of course, all this depends on the future mimicking the past, and we can find any number of reasons to call that assumption into question. For both Bryant and James, the most prominent hurdle is one that hasn't figured into my formula: the potential for a lockout in 2011-12.

It's a real possibility, and it would greatly diminish the odds of either setting the record. Let's look at a worst-case scenario and say the league shuts down entirely that season. Subtracting a season of output would hurt Bryant much more than James, taking his odds down to 26.2 percent. James' chances would drop, too -- falling to 23.3 percent -- but because time is on his side and he's already made up so much ground, he could bear a lost season much better than Bryant could. It's one of many confounding factors in what is admittedly an inexact science.

So the big takeaway from this exercise is this: When you consider both Bryant and James, there's almost a two-in-three chance (63.4 percent, to be exact) that the eventual owner of the league's scoring record will take the court when the Lakers play Cleveland on Thursday. In that context, Bryant's likely entry to the exclusive 25,000-point club is just one more step on a long road to the league's ultimate individual record.


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Maybe we can sticky thread for either Hollinger articles or ESPN insider articles?
 
if lebron stays healthy his whole career. he will easily become the all time leading scorer in nba history. i think he can get 40k. that also if he doesnt retire early. maybe if he plays till his 37ish
 
Wait, some of the Mr. Hollinger's math doesn't work.

How does Lebron reach halfway (19194 points) at the end of the 2010-11 season?

Projected End of 2009-10: 15,417
Projected End of 2010-11: (adding on Hollinger's projected 2,355 points a season) 17,772

Which is...not half.
 
I can't see Kobe getting the record, even though I'm sure he will try everything in his power to get it.

Hollinger's established number of points per season for Kobe (2,282) equals a 27.8 ppg average with Kobe playing all 82 games.

If Kobe did this for five seasons following the current one, he would still be around 850 pts behind Kareem.

So, Kobe would start the 2015-16 season with 850 pts needed to catch Kareem. Kobe would be 37 years old that season.

That is, Kobe would be the same age Shaq was at the start of the current season. I think the oldest guy in the league right now is Lindsey Hunter (40). I believe Shaq is the second-oldest player in the NBA right now.

Though he would be pretty old then, I think the biggest problem for Kobe in trying to catch Kareem is the total minutes he has played in his career. Players only have so many minutes in their legs, it seems, until they're either just done or else they start piling up injuries. Big men get off easier this way because they don't have to be able to move around as much as do perimeter players like Bryant.

At the end of this season, Kobe will have about the same number of total minutes played as Jordan did when retired, for good, from the Chicago Bulls. Jordan was 34 and he averaged 28.7 ppg that season with much of the damage being done on post-ups and fade away jumpers.

http://www.basketball-reference.com/players/j/jordami01.html

I just can't see Kobe averaging nearly what MJ did MJ's last Bulls year for 5 more years and playing all 82 games with the amount of minutes on Kobe's legs. Then he would have to play that final year at 37 years old to get the record.

Maybe he can do it, but I'll only believe it when I see it.

Kobe is not a big guy. He's already in the Stockton Zone of dirty and cheap plays because of his fading athletic ability and need to try to get position when he posts up. It was easier for MJ because he was bigger and stronger than Kobe.

With Kobe's fading quickness and ability to beat guys off the dribble, coupled with his relatively slight frame for posting up, I can't see him breaking the record. I just don't think he'll be able to make it that far. We'll see.
 
Hollinger also incorrectly skews the results Kobe's way with another miscalculation. He states that players that are 6'10" play the most games and that diminishes as you get taller or shorter. Then he uses 72", or 6'0", as his determination for adjusted remaining seasons. He should have used 82" in this calculation. Kobe's result still would have been the same as his HeightDiff would still be 6, but Lebron, Durant, and Bryant would all have HeightDiffs of less than 3, giving them about a half of an extra season on ARS and increasing their probability of reaching Kareem. Kobe still has the best chance statistically, mainly because he is so much closer than the other 3, but it should be closer.
 

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