LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA JANUARY 7, 2020-Lakers LeBron James celebrates his basket and a foul by the Knicks at the Staples Center Tuesday. (Wally Skalij/Los Angerles Times)
LeBron James of the Lakers breaks the NBA scoring record and is nominated for an ESPY.
LeBron James has played in the NBA for 20 years and has won 15 individual ESPYs.
ESPN has named him a breakthrough athlete once, the best NBA player eight times, the best male athlete three times, and the best championship performance three times.
He was nominated for the first time this year in the best record-breaking performance category after, on February 8, he overtook Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA’s all-time top scorer. That evening at Crypto.com Arena, he scored 38 points in the Lakers’ 133-130 loss to Oklahoma City.
James is up against Serbian tennis player Novak Djokovic, who won his men’s record 23rd Grand Slam title at the French Open earlier this month; Dutch-Belgian driver Max Verstappen, who set the record with 15 wins in a Formula One season; and American skier Mikaela Shiffrin, whose 88 World Cup wins are the most in the history of the sport. The nominations were made public on Wednesday morning.
Caleb Williams, the Heisman Trophy-winning quarterback from USC, is nominated for best male collegiate athlete, while Shohei Ohtani, the two-way star for the Angels, is considered for best MLB player. Ally Lemos of UCLA was nominated for best play after setting up teammate Reilyn Turner’s game-tying goal in regulation of the Bruins’ NCAA championship game victory over North Carolina with 30 seconds left.
