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Shaq continues climb up NBA's all-time scoring list
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The Big Diesel has a chance to move all the way up
to the fifth all-time NBA scorer by this season's end.
(AP Photo: Darryl Webb)
Shaquille O’Neal is at that point of his career where it seems like every other game or so he’s reaching another point in a milestone.
Some are flattering, such as his progressive climb up the league’s all-time scoring list. And others, like 5,000 career free throw misses, not so much.
O’Neal entered the 2008-09 season with 26,286 career points, good enough for 11th all-time. Since then, he’s passed three NBA greats to reach where he currently sits in eighth place.
On November 12th, 2008, during the game marred by the ugly skirmish against the Houston Rockets, O’Neal scored 18 points to lift him past John Havlicek (26,395) for 10th on the list.
Just this past week, O’Neal passed the next two on the list, first Dominique Wilkins (26,668) with 28 points against the Thunder on December 29th, and then Oscar Robertson (26,710) for eighth place the next night with 24 points at Memphis.
Now, Shaq sits just over 200 points behind Houston legend Hakeem Olajuwon (26,946), and is looming closer and closer to being just the seventh player in NBA history to score 27,000 points.
If O’Neal stays healthy for the entire season, there’s a chance he could move as high as the fifth all-time leading scorer this year. Averaging 17.2 points per game, he would need to play approximately 66 regular season games with that average to pass Moses Malone (27,409).
O’Neal however, has not played 66 games in a regular season since the 2004-05 campaign, his first year with the Miami Heat (73 games).
If he weren’t able to reach that mark this season, he would surely be close enough to pass Elvin Hayes (27,313) and Malone next year. Noting his poor free throw shooting and recent injuries, O’Neal said he could’ve been in the top five two years ago.
Regardless, the fifth all-time leading scorer in the NBA will be as high as O’Neal will reach. The four currently sitting above Malone all scored above 30,000 points each, a milestone O’Neal can’t reach without playing three or four more seasons after this.
The all-time leading scorer in NBA history is Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with 38,387, and the next highest active player on the list behind Shaq is Allen Iverson (23,536), currently 17th.
You can see the Top 30 all-time scorers here.
