LeBron James becomes NBA’s first 40,000-point scorer: Best memes and tweets

At this point in LeBron James' career, every stat is as unthinkable as the last. With his 20-year career combined with his sustained excellence, the Los Angeles Lakers star has been re-writing the NBA's record books over the past few years.

Last season, he passed another Lakers great in Kareem Abdul-Jabbar to become the all-time leading scorer in NBA history. On Saturday night as the Lakes faced the Denver Nuggets, though, he truly put himself in a category of his own.

With a lay-up early in the second quarter, LeBron became the first player to ever reach 40,000 career points scored. Naturally, he was met with a thunderous reaction and subsequent standing ovation from the crowd in Los Angeles.

But even better than the reactions from the fans in attendance at Crypto.com Arena was the reaction from the NBA World, partiuclarly on Twitter/X.

LeBron James becomes first 40,000-point scorer in NBA history: Best memes, tweets

The memes, the reactions, and everything in-between were both hilarious and mind-blowing with each stat feeling less real than the last -- and of course getting a shot in at Skip Bayless's impending reaction.

Perhaps the best part of the reaction to LeBron's historic night and milestone was just the awe every NBA fan was in at the achievement. And perhaps no one put it in perspective better than Tommy Beer, who noted that reaching 40,000 points for his career now has James above Lakers great Magic Johnson and Celtics legend Larry Bird combined in career points.

Considering the level of sustained greatness that we've seen from LeBron over the entirety of his career -- not to mention the overall health he's been able to maintain -- it's almost a certainty that we just witnessed something we'll never see again in basketball.

Oftentimes, LeBron is an easy punching bag. Whether it's been his franchise hopping, his lack of rings, or even his affinity for reading the first page of books, there have been plenty of instances where he's deserved to have a bit of fun poked at him. But one thing that's never been in question and is even less so after Saturday is his greatness. We are truly watching legendary stuff in real time.