{"id":127377,"date":"2025-03-07T09:06:45","date_gmt":"2025-03-07T14:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=127377"},"modified":"2025-03-08T23:44:07","modified_gmt":"2025-03-09T04:44:07","slug":"lebron-james-passes-tim-duncan-all-time-wins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/07\/lebron-james-passes-tim-duncan-all-time-wins\/","title":{"rendered":"LeBron James Passes Tim Duncan, Fulfills Prophecy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As the basketball world approaches the end of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/j\/jamesle01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">LeBron James<\/a> Era, hoops fans are constantly treated to real-time shifts in the record books. For example, within 48 hours of James becoming the first NBA player <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/03\/04\/lebron-james-legend-50k-points\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">to accumulate 50,000 career points<\/a> (playoffs included), the 21-time NBA All-Star (another league record) passed Hall of Fame forward-center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/duncati01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Tim Duncan<\/a> in career wins. Following the Los Angeles Lakers overtime victory over the New York Knicks, James now has 1,002 career wins, the third-most of all-time.<\/p>\n<p>There&#8217;s both irony and prophecy in James&#8217;s latest accomplishment.<\/p>\n<h2>LeBron James Passes Tim Duncan, Fulfills Prophecy<\/h2>\n<p>The prophetic aspect of James passing Duncan in all-time wins requires remembering what Duncan told James after his San Antonio Spurs trounced the Akron native&#8217;s Cleveland Cavaliers in the 2007 NBA Finals.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">&#8220;This is gonna be your league in a little while.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tim Duncan to LeBron 18 years ago \ud83d\ude47\u200d\u2642\ufe0f<\/p>\n<p>Tonight, LBJ passes Duncan on the all-time WINS list! <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/Afo0qUALkE\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">https:\/\/t.co\/Afo0qUALkE<\/a> <a  href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/fW5U2Nyruq\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/fW5U2Nyruq<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 NBA (@NBA) <a  href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/NBA\/status\/1897892734536413689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">March 7, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This is gonna be your league in a little while,&#8221; Duncan said.<\/p>\n<p>Even he might not have realized how right he was. Ironically, James moving up to third place in career wins gives people a chance to reflect on his foresight.<\/p>\n<p>Since the 2006-07 season, James has won four NBA MVP awards, four NBA championships, and four NBA Finals MVP Awards. He&#8217;s been to the NBA Finals nine times, with eight consecutive appearances from 2011 to 2018. His influence on the game might be more muted than other superstars, but he&#8217;s the poster child for versatility and efficiency. His days with the Miami Heat didn&#8217;t just inspire the Big 3 Era, but advanced the concept of semi-positionless offense.<\/p>\n<p>When he faced Duncan in the 2007 NBA Finals, James was considered Hall of Fame wing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/j\/jordami01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Michael Jordan<\/a>&#8216;s heir apparent. Now, he&#8217;s considered the greatest player of all-time. Like Jordan, he&#8217;s also global icon.<\/p>\n<h3>More To Come?<\/h3>\n<p>There&#8217;s a solid chance that James is in his penultimate season. He&#8217;s been playing so spectacularly that there&#8217;s hope that he might extend his career. Furthermore, the Lakers&#8217; acquisition of 26-year-old <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/d\/doncilu01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Luka Doncic<\/a> has relieved his playmaking burden.<\/p>\n<p>Yet, there&#8217;s also a sense that James is giving L.A. whatever he has left in the tank. After all, he&#8217;s already 40 years old. He&#8217;s also been nursing a foot injury throughout the 2024-25 season. In fact, when he stepped away from the team earlier this season, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2024\/12\/15\/lakers-explain-lebron-james-absence\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">part of the reason<\/a> was for him to rest his foot.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, James is just 13 wins away from surpassing Hall of Fame center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/p\/parisro01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Robert Parish<\/a> in all-time wins. He&#8217;s likely to achieve that feat within the next two seasons. He&#8217;ll also have a chance to pass Hall of Fame center <a href=\"https:\/\/www.basketball-reference.com\/players\/a\/abdulka01.html\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Kareem Abdul-Jabbar<\/a>, who played until he was 42 years old.<\/p>\n<p>\u00a9 Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As the basketball world approaches the end of the LeBron James Era, hoops fans are constantly treated to real-time shifts in the record books. For example, within 48 hours of James becoming the first NBA player to accumulate 50,000 career points (playoffs included), the 21-time NBA All-Star (another league record) passed Hall of Fame forward-center [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5008,"featured_media":127378,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[26,1608,5,8,62,12,3,34],"tags":[2047,38,607,2104,56],"class_list":["post-127377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lakers","category-basketball","category-celtics","category-bulls","category-nba","category-knicks","category-news","category-spurs","tag-kareem-abdul-jabbar","tag-lebron-james","tag-michael-jordan","tag-robert-parish","tag-tim-duncan"],"modified_by":"Quenton S Albertie","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5008"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=127377"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127377\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":127623,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/127377\/revisions\/127623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/127378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=127377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=127377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=127377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}