DENVER (AP) — LeBron James surpassed Kareem Abdul-Jabbar for the most field goals in NBA history but his night ended with a disheartening loss and a sore left elbow.
James hit a turnaround 12-foot jumper over Zeke Nnaji with 12 seconds left in the first quarter of the Los Angeles Lakers' 120-113 loss to the Denver Nuggets on Thursday night to surpass Abdul-Jabbar's mark.
“My name being mentioned with some of the greatest to ever play this game has always been humbling and pretty cool,” James said. “It's a pretty cool thing. I grew up watching and reading, idolizing a lot of the greats. And if I ever was able to be a part of the NBA, I wanted to be in position where I could be named with some of the greats by doing something right."
The record-breaking bucket gave James 15,838 career field goals in his unprecedented 23rd NBA season. Abdul-Jabbar had 15,837 baskets when the skyhook-wielding big man ended his 20-year career in 1989 as the NBA's career scoring leader. Karl Malone is a distant third with 13,528 field goals.
James finished with 16 points on 7-of-11 shooting but it was his all-round game that kept the Lakers close after the Nuggets jumped out to a 16-3 lead in their wire-to-wire win. James had a team-high eight assists, three steals and a big block.
“He's been a complete player for 23 years,” Lakers coach J.J. Redick said. “... He's just a phenomenal basketball player.”
Nikola Jokic concurred, saying, “He's definitely a legendary player.”
James passed Abdul-Jabbar to become the top scorer in NBA history in February 2023. James was already the top scorer in NBA playoff history, and he surpassed 50,000 career points in the regular season and postseason combined a year ago.
James has already attempted more field goals than any NBA player — 31,274 entering Thursday night, including more than 7,500 3-pointers.
Abdul-Jabbar, the low-post virtuoso who made more than 50% of his shots in 19 straight seasons to start his career, attempted only 28,307 field goals — and just 18 of them were 3-pointers after the shot was introduced to the league midway through his career.
James hurt his left elbow on a layup that pulled Los Angeles to 110-106 with four minutes to go and left the game. He and Jokic banged into each other as James scored and James fell to the floor, bracing himself with his right arm but injuring his left. No foul was called and James said the officials told him the contact was “marginal.”
“It's pretty sore right now. It feels like a funny bone situation," said James, who returned with 2:05 left and the Lakers trailing by a point. The Lakers, however, never were able to overcome the Nuggets — or leapfrog them in the standings.
Asked if he was concerned about the severity of the injury, James said, “We'll see what happens over the next couple of days. Hopefully, I wake up tomorrow and it doesn't feel too much worse than it does now — or if it feels better, that would be great.”
So, James wasn't really in the mood to look back over his career and relish making more baskets than anyone who ever played the game.
“I don't know, right now it doesn't hit me at all,” James said. “Obviously, what I feel is my elbow and I feel the loss.
"Obviously, it's a pretty cool feat. But it's hard for me to kind of wrap my head around it and what it looks like. It's something, one, that I've never had a goal to have that record ... but it's a pretty cool feat, it's an unbelievable feat."
Abdul-Jabbar was a career 55.9% shooter, while James has hit 51.6% of his shots.
James tied Abdul-Jabbar's record with his second basket of the game, an alley-oop dunk from Luka Doncic.
Now 41, James regularly sets NBA records for longevity and career achievements — most recently becoming the oldest player to get a triple-double last month.
Before tipoff, Redick compared his superstar to another iconic American virtuoso: the Boss.
“Yeah, I’m a big Bruce Springsteen fan, and I would probably say his early albums really, really get me going,” Redick said. “There’s a youthfulness to him, you know, in energy. ‘Nebraska’ is actually my favorite album of all time. And that’s very different from what he had done that far in his career. And then you can kind of see the evolution of him as a singer-songwriter. and then he comes out with the greatest hits. And you’re like, ‘Wow, this is pretty good.’
“And then after that he comes out with ‘The Rising,’ which is one of the most important albums of the 2000s. So, you get to the end and you’re like, ‘Holy man, this guy’s greatest hits are like insane.’ And LeBron’s greatest hits, right? He just keeps adding to them. He just plays and plays and plays and the greatest hits, he’s got a hell of a catalog.”
Even more history awaits James later in March, barring injury — and left elbow now willing: The Lakers' visit to the Nuggets was the 1,606th regular-season game of his career, putting him just five games behind Robert Parish (1,611) for the most in NBA history. James already holds the league's career record for playoff games with 292.
James says he hasn't decided whether to return to the Lakers next season, but he believes he could keep playing at a high level indefinitely. He was selected for the All-Star Game for the 22nd time in his career despite missing 18 games due to injury, precluding him from consideration for the postseason All-NBA teams.
Beacham reported from Los Angeles. AP freelance writer Ashlyn Stapleton contributed.
AP NBA: https://apnews.com/NBA
Los Angeles Lakers forward LeBron James, right, goes up for a field goal to surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar's record of 15,837 to become the NBA's all-time leader in field goals as Denver Nuggets forward Zeke Nnaji defendns in the first half of an NBA basketball game Thursday, March 5, 2026, in Denver. (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)
MELBOURNE, Australia (AP) — As crowds filtered into Melbourne's Albert Park on Friday for Formula 1’s first day of practice at its 2026 season opener, there were questions. Plenty of them.
The first, and most pressing, at the milestone 40th Australian Grand Prix was the potential postponement or cancellation of upcoming F1 races in the Middle East on April 12 and 19 in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
That's due to the war involving the United States, Israel and Iran which has made travel difficult due to closed air spaces and dangerous to be in the region. F1’s governing body, the FIA, has already postponed the Qatar curtain raiser for top sportscar category, the World Endurance Championship, that was slated to be held on March 26-28.
And while it, and Formula One Management, the sport’s commercial rights holder, are monitoring the situation in real time — with a focus on the safety and well-being of all concerned — an announcement is expected soon.
In the F1 paddock, though, where performance is king, the biggest question mark is the sport’s reshuffled pecking order as a result of new technical regulations — including the position of new American startup squad, General Motors-sponsored Cadillac.
F1 heads into a new era this year, with unprecedented changes across the chassis (car) and power unit, which now feature an almost 50:50 output split between the turbo 1.6-liter V6 engine and electrical energy harvested from the brakes, one that requires a new, often counterintuitive driving style from the drivers.
Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc topped the final pre-season test in Bahrain, just over eight tenths of a second clear of Mercedes young gun Kimi Antonelli. But it’s the Italian’s Silver Arrows team who go into the meeting as favorites, based on an alleged engine advantage that they’ve yet to run at full tilt.
Should Mercedes set the track alight, with searing, dominant pace, it’s expected that it will be George Russell, though, and not Antonelli, who would lead the charge. The British driver has five career wins and has been relaxed.
“The car is performing as we expected. What was very important is seeing the correlation (between wind tunnel and track) is good, there’s no major scares on the car,” Russell said.
Ferrari, though, is expected to be quick — and in contention for its first win on Aussie soil since 2022, thanks to its nimble car and smaller turbo that requires less spooling-up to deliver performance and lighting starts.
“We got great mileage done in winter testing,” said the Scuderia’s rejuvenated seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton. “An amazing amount of work has been done from the team back at the factory, but also delivering on those tests, and we’ve learned a lot from last year."
A huge spotlight in Australia, though, is understandably focused on local hero, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri. Piastri is no doubt in the hunt for redemption after the title last year slipped through his fingers and went to teammate Lando Norris.
A bitter pill to swallow, given the Australian led the series standings for 189 days from Saudi Arabia to Mexico, but lost out after a series of mistakes, his toughest round at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Piastri believes he and Norris will start behind the front-runners, but the pressure remains from local media, who want to see him become the first Australian to win his home race.
“If I had a dollar for every time I got asked that, I’d be a few dollars richer!” Piastri joked. “Every driver wants to win their home race and that’s no different for me."
Piastri kept dreams of a home win alive after he ended Friday’s second practice session on top, just over two-tenths of a second up on the two Mercedes, with Antonelli ahead of Russell.
Hamilton finished the session fourth, 0.321 seconds adrift, with the seven-time world champion ahead of Leclerc to close out the top five. Qualifying is Saturday.
The fourth team expected to be in the mix is Red Bull.
But four-time world champion Max Verstappen, with his RB22 delivering impressive energy management, remains in the dark about where he will work out in the mix.
“I think we want to be a little bit faster and naturally everyone always wants to be faster,” Verstappen said. “But from the things that I think we learned in Bahrain, at least we were not the quickest. But yeah, I have no idea, we’ll just see where we are here to start with.”
Aston Martin has no illusions of even finishing the race on Sunday. Adrian Newey, the F1 car design great who’s heading into his first race as Aston Martin’s team principal, said Thursday the team’s Honda power unit causes vibrations which could damage the hands of drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.
Just another question mark for the season-opening race.
AP auto racing: https://apnews.com/hub/auto-racing
Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland steers his car during the first practice session for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Heath McKinley )
McLaren driver Oscar Piastri of Australia gets into his car for the first practice session for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)
Red Bull driver Max Verstappen of the Netherlands prepares for the first practice session for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)
Mercedes driver George Russell of Britain gestures as he walks down the F1 Paddock ahead of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Heath McKinley)
Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc of Monaco poses for a portrait ahead of the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Thursday, March 5, 2026. (AP Photo/Asanka Brendon Ratnayake)
Cadillac driver Valtteri Bottas of Finland signs autographs as he arrives ahead of the first practice session for the Australian Formula One Grand Prix at Albert Park, in Melbourne, Australia, Friday, March 6, 2026. (AP Photo/Scott Barbour)
