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LeBron James turned a 12-foot turnaround jumper over Denver Nuggets forward Zeke Nnaji into the most significant shot of an already historically unmatched career on Thursday night at Ball Arena, surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s NBA record of 15,837 career field goals to claim a second all-time statistical landmark from the same player — and then watched the Los Angeles Lakers lose 120-113 to the Denver Nuggets in a defeat that tightened the Western Conference playoff race with 18 games remaining.
The record-breaking shot came with 12 seconds left in the first quarter, James turning on the left block in the way Nnaji said before the game he had studied and prepared for. When James retreated to the Lakers bench at the end of the period, the Ball Arena public address announcer informed the Denver crowd, who gave him a standing ovation. James now has 15,838 career field goals across his unprecedented 23rd NBA season, with Abdul-Jabbar having accumulated 15,837 baskets when the skyhook-wielding big man ended his 20-year career in 1989 as the NBA’s career scoring leader. He had tied the record two possessions earlier with an alley-oop dunk from Luka Doncic that cut Denver’s early lead to 16-7.
James and Abdul-Jabbar are the only two players in NBA history to reach 15,000 career field goals — and in fact, the only two to ever reach 14,000. Karl Malone is a distant third with 13,528, followed by Wilt Chamberlain with 12,681 and Michael Jordan with 12,192. The gap between James and the field is a measure of a career whose combination of longevity, volume, and efficiency has no precedent in the sport’s history.
James passed Abdul-Jabbar to become the top scorer in NBA history in February 2023, and his career points total of more than 43,000 is nearly 5,000 more than Abdul-Jabbar in second place. The field goal record carries a distinct analytical footnote: Abdul-Jabbar played most of his career before the introduction of the three-point line in 1979, accumulating his totals almost entirely from inside the arc. James has already attempted more field goals than any NBA player — 31,274 entering Thursday night, including more than 7,500 three-pointers. His path to the record was therefore built partly on the structural advantage of playing in a three-point era, but it required outlasting every player who shared that era — an argument for longevity as much as any other attribute.
Lakers coach J.J. Redick framed James’s career in terms that reached beyond basketball before the game. A self-described Bruce Springsteen devotee, Redick described watching James’s career arc the way a music fan tracks an artist across decades of reinvention.
“There’s a youthfulness to him in energy. And then you can kind of see the evolution. And then he comes out with the greatest hits. And you’re like, ‘Wow, this is pretty good,'” Redick said. The analogy was affectionate but also structurally apt: James at 41 is not the same player he was at 21, but the statistical output that defines his legacy continued to accumulate on Thursday night regardless.
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The evening’s complications arrived later. James injured his left elbow in the fourth quarter on a layup that pulled the Lakers within 110-106 with four minutes remaining. He landed on the legs of a courtside cameraman and was helped from the court, substituted immediately. He returned for the final two minutes but was visibly limited in his movement.
The Lakers had no injury update after the final buzzer. James has made public remarks about retirement in recent weeks — “I don’t know what the future holds,” he told reporters in January — and an elbow injury in the season’s final stretch will intensify that discussion regardless of its severity.
The game itself was Denver’s from wire to wire. Nikola Jokic’s 187th career triple-double — 28 points, 13 assists, and 12 rebounds — led Denver to the victory despite nine turnovers from the Nuggets centre. Jamal Murray matched Jokic’s points total with 28 of his own on 8-of-17 shooting, going a perfect 7-of-7 from the free-throw line and providing the game-sealing makes in the final minutes. Denver led 32-22 after a first quarter in which the Lakers struggled to execute offensively before finding better rhythm, equalising at 54-54 by halftime through improved paint scoring and transition opportunities.
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The Lakers outscored Denver 32-29 in the third quarter and 27-27 in the fourth, with the deficit set in the opening period proving insurmountable. Doncic posted 27 points, 11 rebounds, and seven assists but committed three turnovers and received a technical foul. Austin Reaves contributed 16 points and seven assists alongside a team-high three steals. Jaxson Hayes was the most efficient Laker with 19 points on 8-of-10 shooting, and Rui Hachimura added 16 off the bench on 4-of-5 shooting from three-point range.
Further history awaits James later in March, barring injury: Thursday’s game was the 1,606th regular-season contest of his career, leaving him just five games behind Robert Parish’s all-time record of 1,611. James already holds the career record for playoff games played with 292. He is a 22-time All-Star — itself a record — a four-time league MVP, four-time NBA champion, and four-time Finals MVP. He is currently averaging 21.6 points, 5.7 rebounds, and 7.0 assists while shooting 50.2 per cent from the field this season.
The defeat had immediate Western Conference playoff implications. The Lakers remain in sixth place with an automatic berth, but the Nuggets closed to within one game of them in fifth. The Phoenix Suns lost 105-103 to the Chicago Bulls on Thursday, leaving Los Angeles two games ahead of Phoenix in eighth. The Lakers host the Indiana Pacers on Saturday night — an 80.8 per cent home win probability game according to league data — before taking on the New York Knicks on Sunday. Their next meeting with the Nuggets is scheduled for March 15 at Staples Center.
