LeBron James is about to catch Kareem Abdul-Jabbar again.
In a season in which James passed Abdul-Jabbar and became the NBA's all-time scoring leader, James is on the brink of taking away two more of the Hall of Fame center's marks.
The NBA started calling this round of the playoffs the "conference finals'' in 1971 and no player has been in more games, or played in more wins, than Abdul-Jabbar. He has played in 65 conference finals games, winning 43 of them.
James has played in 64, with No. 65 set to come Tuesday when the Lakers open the West finals against Denver. He has played in 42 wins in this round; Abdul-Jabbar's teams went 43-22, James' teams are 42-22.
James (1,884) already is the all-time conference finals scoring leader, well ahead of Abdul-Jabbar's 1,588 points.
James also has the three highest-scoring conference finals appearances. He had 235 points for Miami in a seven-game winning series against Boston in 2012, 235 for Cleveland in another seven-game win against Boston in 2018 and 231 for Cleveland in a six-game loss to Orlando in 2009.
WHAT'S NEXT?
Victor Wembanyama will find out Tuesday night where his NBA story begins.
Before Game 1 of Lakers-Nuggets, the NBA draft lottery will be held in Chicago. That will determine the order of next month's draft, and whichever team wins the No. 1 pick surely will use it to select the 7-foot-3, 19-year-old French phenom.
After that, there's at least eight (and probably more) consecutive nights of basketball. The Lakers-Nuggets series starts Tuesday, the Celtics-Heat series starts Wednesday and the teams just keep alternating days from there. Unlike the first two rounds, there are no extra off days in these conference finals — teams play every other day.
REMATCHES (SORT OF)
Yes, these conference finals are a rematch of the conference finals held in the Walt Disney World bubble in 2020: Lakers vs. Nuggets, Celtics vs. Heat.
But not really.
The Lakers have changed coaches, Frank Vogel then and Darvin Ham now. The Celtics have changed coaches twice, Brad Stevens then, followed by Ime Udoka first and now Joe Mazzulla.
And roughly 75 per cent of the rosters have changed since then as well.
— Miami has the most holdovers from the bubble season, with six: Jimmy Butler, Bam Adebayo, Gabe Vincent, Tyler Herro, Duncan Robinson and Udonis Haslem.
— Boston has five: Jayson Tatum, Jaylen Brown, Marcus Smart, Grant Williams and Robert Williams.
— Denver has four: Nikola Jokic, Jamal Murray, Michael Porter Jr. and Vlatko Cancar.
— And the Lakers have two: LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
Apologies to Kentavious Caldwell-Pope for not making those lists. He was in the bubble conference finals, playing for the Lakers against the Nuggets — and he now plays for the Nuggets, against the Lakers.
QUOTABLE
"LeBron is one of the best players, probably one of the best or the best player to ever play basketball. He's really, really, really, really affected the game in every possible way.'' — Denver's Nikola Jokic on LeBron James.
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