LeBron James sets new career NBA wins record, passes Kareem Abdul-Jabbar

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: LeBron James has set a new NBA record. On Tuesday night, James and the Los Angeles Lakers defeated the Cleveland Cavaliers, 127-113. Between the regular season and the playoffs, it was the 1,229th NBA game that James has won. That breaks a record previously held by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, who racked up his victories across his own legendary 20-year career.

James passing Abdul-Jabbar in the record books has become a somewhat frequent occurrence. James famously passed Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time scoring leader back during the 2022-23 season. More recently, on March 5, James also passed Abdul-Jabbar for the career record in terms of field goals. Soon after that, James took Robert Parish’s career games played record. Parish ranks fourth on the all-time wins list with 1,121.

Just to specify, James still does not hold the all-time regular-season wins record. That still belongs to Abdul-Jabbar, who won 1,074 regular-season games as a Buck and Laker. James has a 29-win gap to fill at 1,045. Obviously, with less than two weeks left in the regular season, James won’t be able to cross that line this year. If he’s going to set the regular-season wins record, he’ll have to come back and play a 24th NBA season, either with the Lakers or another team.

If James does return, well, basically every longevity record will then belong to him. As we’ve covered, James already owns the records for games (both regular-season and playoffs) and wins (playoffs now, regular-season next year), but he also holds the record for both regular-season and playoff minutes, total seasons played (23) and total postseasons appeared in (soon to be 20).

Records are obviously old hat for James at this point. Even he probably doesn’t know how many of them he’s set. But there’s something particularly meaningful about the wins record because winning is the singular goal whenever James, or any player, steps on the court. James has never been defined by his statistics, but winning more games than any other player is a fairly neat summation of his career. Having LeBron James on the floor gives you a chance to win, no matter who else you have on your team. Now, he has the record to prove it.