While good defence is important in the NBA, point scoring is what drives the games and gets fans excited to watch the sport week after week.
The best players to play the game have generally been the ones who have managed to score most consisently.
Here, we have looked into the top 15 highest points scorers in the history of the NBA.
15. Oscar Robertson
Robertson played for 14 seasons, from 1960 to 1974. He often led the league in assists throughout his career, though he was a very good scorer, too.
Robertson ended his career with 26,710 points across his 14 years in the league.
14. Hakeem Olajuwon
Center Olajuwon, who largely played for the Houston Rockets, was in the league for 18 years, and scored over 1500 points in 12 of those seasons.
At the end of his career, in 2002, Olajuwon had 26,946 points.
13. Elvin Hayes
Hayes was the league’s top points scorer in his rookie season, 1968-69, with 2327 points.
He surpassed 2000 points three more times in his career, in each of his next three seasons. By the end of his career, Hayes had racked up 27,313 points.
12. Moses Malone
Malone had four consecutive seasons in which he surpassed 2000 points, with his best, a 2520-point season, coming in 1981-82.
That was one of three years in which he won the league MVP award. Malone finished his career with 27,409 NBA points.
11. James Harden
The NBA MVP in 2017-18 and a three-time scoring champion during his time with the Houston Rockets, Harden has racked up a lot of points, and is still going.
Soon to enter the 17th season of his professional career, Harden is currently sitting on 27,687 points.
10. Carmelo Anthony
One of the most recent additions to the NBA hall of fame, Anthony played 19 years in the league, and twice surpassed 2000 points.
The weight of his point-scoring saw him once win the scoring champion award, and rack up 28,289 points.
9. Shaquille O’Neal
A four-time NBA champion, two-time scoring champion and one-time winner of the MVP award, Shaq left an indelible mark on the game, with his jersey retired by three separate organisations.
At the end of a stellar 19-year career in the NBA, Shaq had 28,596 points to his name.
8. Kevin Durant
In February 2025, active superstar Durant became just the eighth player in NBA history to pass 30,000 points.
He won the scoring title in four of his first seven years in the league, and has never dropped below 25 points per game since.
Ahead of his 18th season in the league, Durant finds himself on 30,571 points.
7. Wilt Chamberlain
A phenomenal scorer over the course of a 14-year career, Chamberlain put up huge points in quicker time than most on this list.
The seven-time scoring champion averaged over 50 points in just his third season in the league – the most ever.
He was the first player to ever reach 30,000 points, ending his career with 31,419.
6. Dirk Nowitzki
Nowitzki scored a lot of points over a lot of years in the NBA. Rarely will a player pass 20 seasons in the league, but Nowitzki played for 21 of them, and he broke 2000 points in five separate seasons.
By the end of his long career, which included one NBA title, the Dallas Mavericks stalwart had 31,560 points.
5. Michael Jordan
Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in NBA history, influenced by his six NBA titles and the amount of clutch moments he came up with, Jordan scored a lot of points every season he played.
In 13 years as a Chicago Bulls player, Jordan was the league scoring champion for 10 of them. He ended his 15-year career in the league on 32,292 points.
4. Kobe Bryant
One of the most widely respected players in the league – before and after his passing in 2020 – Kobe was one of the most talented players to grace the league, winning the title five times, the MVP award once and the scoring title twice.
All of his 20 years in the league came with the LA Lakers, in which he racked up 33,643 points.
3. Karl Malone
One of the very best scorers in the history of the NBA, Malone averaged over 27 points in eight of his 19 seasons.
Twice named league MVP, Malone ended his career with what was at the time the second-highest points total in history: 36,928.
2. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
A six-time MVP and two-time scoring champion, Kareem was for a long time the NBA leader in points scored.
In 1984, with five seasons to come in his career, he passed Chamberlain’s 31,419 points, to become the best scorer in history.
Kareem went on to reach 38,387 points before he retired in 1989.
1. LeBron James
It looked for a long time as if LeBron would be able to climb high on the NBA scorers’ list, given there’s only been one single season in his career in which he has averaged below 25 points per game – his rookie year.
Since then, his best average was 31.4, in one of three seasons he has surpassed 30 points per game, one of which saw him win the scoring title.
LeBron passed Kareem’s 38,387 points in February 2023, and has now made his way to 42,184 points, and he’s still climbing.
