At his current scoring average this season of 25.5 points, he will cross 40,000 in about 39 games.
To score 39,000 points, Lebron has taken 28,000+ shot attempts in NBA games. That’s about 20 shots per game.
Two questions to comment on:
- How many total practice shots do you think he has taken in his career?
They say it takes 10,000 hours to master a skill, and Lebron has clearly crossed that. He’s been playing basketball since he was 10. Let’s say he started practicing in earnest at 14. How many practice shots do you think he takes per day? In his NBA career, between practice and pregame, he has to average 200-300 shots per day (easily). He plays in season about 8 months a year, for now 21 years.
Factoring in conservative estimates, he likely has crossed 1,000,000-1,500,000 shot attempts of a basketball in his life. That doesn’t factor in any of his attempts before the age of 18, and also doesn’t factor in any shots in the off-season. I also don’t know how many shots he averages a day (online sources indicate most players shoot 200-500 a workout).
If anyone else has any data to help inform this model please add.
But this brings me to question #2.
- What in your life have you done 1,000,000 times?
The only thing I can thing of is breaths, swallowing, or blinking. Which means Lebron had shot more basketball shots than the average human does anything other than core functions in their life
Just to comment on your estimate for 200-300 shots per day. I play amateur ball in germany on a rather basic level. yesterday i decided to do a shooting session with a teammate, where we not only shot with a single ball for one hour, but also spoke about execution, foot placement etc. i assume i approached 200 shots in that span, for two people in a casual manner with slightly more misses than makes. i would assume Bron easily exceeds my output by a multiple.