The significance of LeBron James potentially leading the NBA in assists

Always one to dish the rock, that LeBron James is en route to leading the NBA in assists per game says everything about his one-of-a-kind skill set.

Only five players in NBA history — Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Jerry West, Tiny Archibald and Oscar Robertson — have both scoring and assist titles to their name. LeBron James led the NBA in scoring back in 2007-08 with 30.0 a game.

Currently averaging a league-leading 10.8 assists per game for the Los Angeles Lakers, he’s on track to join that prestigious group in due time, but it never seemed inevitable like many of his other accomplishments.

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Long before he entered the NBA in 2003, James just wanted to get his teammates involved.

It’s a sentiment a lot of players claim with actions that speak otherwise, but LeBron has never wavered in the unselfish mindset embedded into his basketball DNA. He’s a pass-first player, sometimes to the detriment of his team, with an incredible level of intelligence that only fosters his play style.

At 6’8”, however, James didn’t exactly fit the mold of a traditional point guard coming out of high school, not when the league pigeon-holed its players based on height instead of skill.

Magic Johnson was an outlier and a national champion at Michigan State before entering the NBA. At the time of the 2003 NBA Draft, LeBron was an unproven prep-to-pro player with every expectation on his shoulders.

So he acquiesced, sliding into the small forward position. The middle ground between a team’s back and frontcourt, the 3 spot is expected to contribute in multiple facets of the game, including the occasional assist.

It’s no coincidence, then, that James’ career numbers of 27.1 points, 7.4 rebounds and 7.3 assists per game reflect those across-the-board expectations.

He’s been an elite passer and unofficial floor general/point forward for quite some time now. But unlike Magic, he was asked to score at a much higher clip on account of his positional responsibilities, resulting in a balancing act that’s been just about perfected.

On this Lakers team, however, LeBron’s duties have been altered in year No. 17.

They don’t have a starting-caliber point guard, so they’ve simply asked James to fill that void and play to his strengths and he’s obliged as if he’s done it his entire career.

His aforementioned 10.8 assists per game are a career-high and he’s assisting on more than half of L.A.’s buckets when he’s on the court. He also ranks third in the NBA in passes per game and first in both potential assists and assist points created.

The Lakers are a Western Conference-best 26-7 on the season and there’s no indication LeBron is anything but comfortable in his new role because it’s the one he was born to occupy.

To pace the NBA in assists is one thing. To do so after being asked for more than a decade to do otherwise is unheard of.

It’s another in the long list of achievements for the future Hall of Famer continuing to defy logic at age 35 that might get lost among the championships and MVP trophies — even among that elite group of contemporaries.

But for someone whose legacy is measured against Michael Jordan‘s on a nightly basis, this potential accomplishment, while insignificant in the rings-heavy GOAT argument, is a testament to how LeBron James has gone about crafting a legacy all his own, one unselfish play at a time.