19th and 20th seasons, respectively, with avg scoring rates that wouldn't have surpassed the record mark by the 20th season (where LeBron and Kareem set their records), and 11th and 12th on the ppg avg. list, which excluded them from this list.

I'm actually a huge MJ fan and this was part shitpost/part actual data to show MJ is the goat. Alt title option was "Haters will say I'm a hater"

The zoomed out version that I didn't post shows Elgin on pretty much the same trajectory, but he only played 11 games total in his last two seasons. And yeah, obviously there would be some attenuation in a true model but these are very basic projections. I made this for Reddit, not a publication lol.

Also, I just drew the line at top 5 avg ppg scorers of all time for the purpose of projections. Karl Malone is 11 on that last, Kobe 12

Ha, yes. I didn't attempt to build any atrophy in here, just simple projections.

Solid lines are actual career stats, dotted lines are projections using historical career stats. Horizontal line was Kareem's record

Source: Basketball Reference player totals data (https://www.basketball-reference.com/)

Tools: Google Sheets

Methodology: Used top 5 avg. points per season scorers plus Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (record holder). For projections, calculated each players career average points per season and average games played per season and multiplied the two to produce cumulative sums.

The "if He Didn't Have a Gambling Problem" part of the title is sarcasm.

Edit: Updated methodology section.

Edit 2: Line about "if He Didn't Have a Gambling Problem"