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Before the injury, LeBron James scored 27 points in the Los Angeles Lakers 131-126 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans. With this score, James is less than 36 points away from surpassing Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the leading scorer in NBA history.
Now all attention turns to next week, with the Lakers facing the Oklahoma City Thunder on Tuesday and the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday. Ticket prices for these two matches even went as high as $100,000! Abdul-Jabbar confirmed he wants to be there when LeBron breaks his record.
Even at age 38, James is scoring points at an impressive rate for a player his age: His average of 30.0 points in 43 games would be the third-highest in his 20 NBA seasons. James made his return to action in the Los Angeles Lakers' game against the Chicago Bulls.
At the end of the match he talked about his injury and recovery: "The doctors have told me I'm recovering faster than anyone they've ever seen before. Two doctors told me I needed surgery. I went to the LeBron James for feet, and he told me I could postpone surgery.
They went 8-5 and obviously we have a chance to make the play-in, and we can be a top eight seed team. Watching them play like that completely changed my mindset and made me want to be a part of it. Needless to say that My mindset really changed.
It improved everything I did: my workouts, my recovery and more. They were playing great basketball. I was ecstatic. You saw me on the sideline, I was very happy with what the guys were doing." James had been out for a month with a bad tendon injury in his foot, and some doctors had advised him to have a surgery.
However, the operation would have compromised the season, and LeBron preferred to try to recover to be ready for the Playoffs. Against Chicago he came off the bench for the second time in his career, but still scored 19 points.