NBA Career Points Leaders

LeBron James became the first player in NBA history to reach 40,000 career points on March 2, 2024, passing a milestone no one else in the league's history has reached. That number alone would be remarkable, but it sits on top of a list of career scorers that includes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose own record stood for nearly 39 years before James passed it in 2023, along with Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki, and Wilt Chamberlain — a group that spans virtually the entire history of the league.

How this ranking works

This list ranks players by total regular-season points scored across their NBA careers, as officially recorded by the league. Playoff points are not included in these totals; this is a regular-season career list specifically. Because several of the players here, most notably LeBron James, played or are still playing years apart from one another, the ranking is a simple cumulative count rather than an attempt to compare scoring rates, efficiency, or peak ability. A player who scored prolifically over a shorter career will not necessarily outrank one who compiled a larger total over a longer one; this list measures career totals only.

Passing the king: how the record changed hands

For nearly four decades, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's career total stood as the standard nobody could reach. Abdul-Jabbar played from 1969 to 1989 with the Milwaukee Bucks and Los Angeles Lakers, finishing with 38,387 points and holding the all-time scoring record for close to 39 years. LeBron James, who entered the league in 2003 and has played for Cleveland, Miami, and the LA Lakers, finally passed that mark in 2023, and continued scoring from there. His total is listed on this ranking as 40,000+ points, reflecting the point at which he became the first player ever to reach that milestone on March 2, 2024 — not a live, up-to-the-minute total, since James remained an active player whose point count kept rising with every game played after that milestone.

Below those two sits a group of players who each, in their own eras, were among the most prolific scorers the league had seen: Karl Malone, who scored 36,928 points across a career split between the Utah Jazz and Los Angeles Lakers from 1985 to 2004; Kobe Bryant, who scored 33,643 points over 20 seasons, all of them with the Lakers; Michael Jordan, who scored 32,292 points primarily with the Chicago Bulls, with a final stretch in Washington; Dirk Nowitzki, who scored 31,560 points across two decades entirely with the Dallas Mavericks; and Wilt Chamberlain, whose 31,419 points were scored from 1959 to 1973 with the Philadelphia and San Francisco Warriors and the Lakers, in an earlier era of the league.

A list spanning the league's full history

What stands out about this group is how far back it reaches. Chamberlain's career began in 1959, when the NBA looked radically different from the league it is today — fewer teams, a different pace of play, and no three-point line, which was not introduced until 1979. Jordan, Malone, and Abdul-Jabbar's careers span the 1970s through the early 2000s. Bryant and Nowitzki's careers ran largely in parallel through the 2000s and 2010s. And James's career, still ongoing as of this ranking, bridges that earlier era all the way into the present day. Together, the list offers a kind of cross-section of pro basketball across more than six decades.

A record still being written

Unlike every other entry on this list, LeBron James's total is not a finished career figure — it is an active, rising number. This ranking lists his total as "40,000+ points (active)" specifically because citing any more precise figure would risk understating his actual total by the time a reader encounters this page. Readers wanting his exact, current point total should check the NBA's own statistics pages directly, since any number printed here would be out of date almost as soon as it was written. This is an important distinction from the other six names on this list, whose careers are complete and whose totals are therefore fixed.

Comparing across eras

Readers should be cautious about treating this list as a simple measure of "greatest scorer," since career point totals are shaped heavily by longevity as well as scoring ability. A player who had a longer career, played more minutes per game, or competed in an era with a faster pace of play and more possessions per game has more opportunities to accumulate points than one who played fewer seasons or in a slower-paced era. Chamberlain's and Abdul-Jabbar's eras, for instance, featured different pacing and rules than the three-point-driven modern game James, Bryant, and Nowitzki played in. None of that diminishes what any individual player achieved, but it is a relevant caveat when comparing raw totals across such a long span of league history.

Sourcing and verification

All point totals, career spans, and team affiliations in this ranking are sourced from the NBA's official all-time statistical leaders. This ranking was last verified in January 2026. Because LeBron James remains active, his total should be considered current only as of that verification, and readers are encouraged to check NBA.com directly for his latest point count.

Closing

From Chamberlain's pioneering scoring seasons in the 1960s to James's ongoing pursuit of new milestones, this list reflects more than sixty years of NBA scoring history, with records that have both stood for decades and fallen within the last few seasons. For related career leaderboards, see the NBA Career Assist Leaders and NBA Career Rebound Leaders rankings.