Denver Nuggets star Nikola Jokic continues to climb the all-time NBA ranks, and he's doing so at such a rapid pace that it's not too hard to envision him finishing as one of the greatest stat-sheet stuffers of all time. In need of just four points to cross the 13,000 mark for his career, Jokic was able to make history on Wednesday night in the first quarter of their contest against the Utah Jazz.
Now that Jokic has crossed the 13,000-point mark for his career, he was able to make NBA history. According to the official NBA Twitter (X) account, he is now the youngest player to cross 13,000 points, 6,000 rebounds, and 4,000 assists for one's career; at 28 years old, the Nuggets star was able to beat the previous record set by LeBron James, who became a member of the 13,000/6,000/4,000 club at 29 years and 82 days old.
James became an official member of that club back on March 23, 2014, as he needed a few more rebounds to cross the 6,000 mark for his career before then. Still, to put in perspective how incredible of a career James has had, by that time, he already had 22,820 points and 5,722 assists.
Now of course, LeBron James is the NBA's all-time scoring leader, and he continues to climb the all-time assists rankings as well. He is currently fourth in the all-time assists leaderboard, with 10,684 at the time of writing.
For Nikola Jokic, he didn't exactly get the reins to the Nuggets early on in his career like James did with the Cleveland Cavaliers. He was coming off the bench to start his career, and it wasn't until 2017 that the team fully handed over control of the offense to the talented Serbian big man.
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But for Jokic to still be in a world of his own as a statistical accumulator is a sight to behold, and it goes to show how elite of a player he is. And to top it all off, these gaudy stat lines of his directly lead to winning for a Nuggets team whose orbit revolves around him.
However, at the moment, the Nuggets are down big to the Jazz at the half, so Nikola Jokic will have to put up a stellar effort to help his team mount yet another comeback.