The 2016-17 NBA season will have several players achieve significant personal milestones. Here are five to keep an eye on this upcoming NBA season.
For many hoop heads, Basketball-Reference.com is a must-bookmark site for all things basketball statistics. It has provided NBA fans with great analytical content at the touch of their fingertips for years. One of the more fascinating elements at Basketball-Reference is the NBA Milestone Watch.
Basketball-Reference will project potential personal milestones that any player could conceivably achieve in the upcoming season. It features 22 statistical categories in both the regular season and NBA playoffs that could be achieved.
With so many personal milestones on the precipice of being achieved in the 2016-17 NBA season, here is a look at five to watch for this winter.
5. Vince Carter: 25,000 career points.
Vince Carter should be a no-doubt Basketball Hall of Famer when he does call it a career. His electrifying dunks with the early 2000s Toronto Raptors gave the sport legs in the eyes of Canada’s youth. Without Carter, does Canada still have a professional basketball team?
While Carter will turn 40 on January 26th, he has an outside chance at reaching 25,000 career points in the NBA. He absolutely will reach 24,000 in 2016-17, as he is only 31 points away from that threshold. Achieving 25,000 essentially guarantees that Carter will be as revered historically as Dominique Wilkins is as an elite small forward. Carter is already No. 24 all-time in scoring, but getting to 25,000 puts him in the pantheon as one of the greatest scorers in NBA history.
It would be a great footnote in Carter’s NBA career to get to 25,000. The only problem is that hasn’t scored over 1,000 points in a season since 2012-13 when he was with the Dallas Mavericks. At the rate he’s going, it may actually take two years to get there.
Next: 4. Chris Andersen: 1,000 career blocks.