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
That no. 2 is a huge assumption. Basically anyone in any form of trade would have something they have done a million times. Wrench turns, bolts screwed in, wood pieces sanded etc etc.
Developers could easily get up to million bugs resolved (or created no judgment).
Artists, writers, anyone with a hobby. It's not unique to LeBron to work hard on his craft and practicing or doing a repetitive motion is the go to form of training for A LOT of things.
Still it's a fun exercise to do. As a former swimmer we always used to try and calculate the total mileage we swam in our careers.
First of all, LeBron is one of the greatest athletes of all time. He takes care of his body and managed to stay out of any trouble his whole career. His lomgevity is umprecedent in most sports bar what, Gretzky? I dont know. He's great. If he's not the GOAT, he's the clear second in terms of basketball.
But, I have to be the hummmm acshually 🤓 guy and put that last statement into a little more perspective..
An average human blinks between 14k to 17k times a day...
let's take the lower number.
A 30 year old human would have blinked, on average, 153,300,000.00 times.
so that's a lot more than 1,000,000...