LeBron James joins Utah Jazz great in an exclusive club

Utah Jazz legend Karl Malone now has more company on the 36,000-point list.

Entering this week, former Utah Jazz power forward Karl Malone was one of only two all-time NBA players with at least 36,000 points in the regular season to their names. The other man on that list is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, whose 38,387 points across 20 seasons (1969-70 to 1988-1989) remain in the No. 1 spot.

But now, Los Angeles Lakers all-purpose forward LeBron James has joined the exclusive club. He did so on Tuesday night with a 32-point outing in a road win against the Houston Rockets, marking his fifth straight game with 30 points or more.

Will LeBron James catch the all-time Utah Jazz scoring leader this season?

Karl Malone finished his 19-year NBA career — the first 18 coming as a member of the Jazz from 1985-86 to 2002-03 — with 36,928 points across 1,476 regular-season games. The two-time NBA MVP’s career scoring average wound up at 25.0 points per game.

LeBron James, whose 37th birthday arrives on Thursday, currently sits at 36,001 points across his 1,333 career games and counting. That equates to 27.0 points per game. In other words, he is well on his way to passing Malone in significantly fewer appearances.

Now, assuming James is healthy for most of the Lakers’ 47 remaining contests, chances are the 18th-year pro will at least flirt with Malone’s mark by the end of this campaign. After all, judging from his most recent string of prolific performances, there is no reason to believe right now that his production will drop significantly in the coming weeks and months.

Let’s say that LeBron James ends up playing in 40 of his team’s remaining games this season. Well, in that case, the four-time MVP would need to average only 23.2 points per game from here on out to surpass Karl Malone’s career total.