The 3-pointer's impact on LeBr...

LeBron James is expected to surpass Kareem Abdul-Jabbar as the NBA's career leader in points scored in the regular season later this season (potentially as early as February), but one record he won't touch for a while is Abdul-Jabbar's mark for made baskets. While James is less than 800 points away from Abdul-Jabbar's record of 38,387, King James still trails the king of the skyhook by more than 2,000 field goals.

Given that gap, how has James closed the mark in points so quickly? Easy. The 3-point shot.

Abdul-Jabbar entered the NBA in 1969 a full 10 years before the NBA even added a 3-point line. Even once the 3-pointer came into existence, it was rarely used throughout the remainder of Abdul-Jabbar's career, especially for a big man. He attempted just 18 in his final 10 seasons, making one. If that basket had counted for 2 points rather than 3 (as every other basket in his career did), he'd still be 795 points ahead of James.

However, while James entered a league dominated by Shaquille O'Neal, Tim Duncan and other powerful big men who forced the gravity of action in and around the low post, he now plies his trade in a league more obsessed with the 3-point shot than ever, and his ability to adapt on the fly in the midst of a pace-and-space revolution that turned pro basketball inside out is a huge reason he's on the precipice of history.

Much like Abdul-Jabbar, who made all but one of his 15,837 baskets inside the arc, James began his path to the scoring record closer to the basket.

His first bucket in the NBA came on a pull-up midrange jumper along the right baseline. That exact spot became his favorite jump shot location early in his career. As you can see on this chart, in his first two seasons in the league, James was quite active in that exact location -- as well as in the midrange in general.

In each of his first two seasons, 37% of his shots came between 10 feet and the 3-point line. James was never shy about taking 3s, but he struggled with long-range jumpers early. In his rookie year of 2003-04, among the 74 players who tried at least 200 triples, James ranked 72nd by making just 29% of his triples.

While James won Rookie of the Year honors, he was arguably one of the worst volume jump shooters in the NBA, and while he has improved in that regard throughout his career, he -- like Abdul-Jabbar -- has largely paved the way to the top of the league's scoring mountain by dominating around the basket.

Throughout his career, a whopping 63% of James' made field goals have come in the paint, and 57.6% have come within 5 feet of the rim. When it's all said and done, James will go down as the best paint scorer of his generation.

In case you think that's an exaggeration, consider this incredible note: Among the top 50 most active paint scorers since 1999-2000, James ranks first in attempted field goals in the paint, first in made field goals in the paint and first in paint field goal percentage.

After ranking 11th in the league in points in the paint per game in his rookie season, he has gone on to rank in the top 10 of that category in 17 of his past 18 seasons. At the peak of his abilities, James led the entire league in the category three times in the four-year span between the 2012-13 season and the 2015-16 season.

The biggest reason James was the most hyped prospect in modern basketball history was the blend of his incredible physical talents with his tremendous basketball savvy. That combination enabled him to destroy interior defenses with driving rim attacks that were equal parts cunning, speedy, powerful and productive.

This season, James still ranks fourth in the league in points in the paint per game, and while those paint buckets remain the main course on his scoring plate, his jump-shooting behavior has changed drastically since he entered the NBA. He deserves immense credit for slowly building a reliable jumper. He will never be Stephen Curry, but his ability to make 3-point shots has become an increasingly important part of his game.

The average distance of his made jumpers his rookie season was 15.7 feet; that is deep in the heart of the midrange. Last season that number was 22.5 feet, much closer to the 3-point arc.

Like the rest of the league, James has fallen in love with 3-point shots while turning his back on those non-paint 2s that represented more than a third of his field goal attempts in the early days. Many of James' touches now occur deep along the left wing, beyond the arc, which is not only his favorite 3-point shooting location but also a great spot for him to attack the middle of the floor using his right-handed dribble.

As a rookie, only 10.1% of James' made baskets came from beyond the arc, while 29.4% came in the midrange. Those numbers have basically flipped in his 20th season, with 22.6% of his buckets coming from 3-point range and just 10.6% from the midrange.

Since the beginning of the 2020-21 season, 27.9% of James' points have come from downtown, and as he races toward the all-time scoring record, his ability to hit 3s is a major factor for two reasons.

The first is simple math. Three is greater than two, and as James leans more heavily on jumpers from downtown, he accelerates his pace toward that magical 38,387 points.

The second is sustainability. Abdul-Jabbar scored his last basket when he was 42. James is turning 38 this month, and racking up points from long range is easier on his aging frame.

As a young scorer, James combined, speed, size, vision, skill and finishing as well as any player the league had ever seen. He was part Magic Johnson, part Giannis Antetokounmpo. Throughout his prime he could get to the paint whenever he wanted and finish with incredible efficiency.

Perhaps no big play encapsulated that more than his legendary buzzer-beater against the Pacers in Game 1 of the 2013 Eastern Conference finals, when he caught Shane Battier's inbounds pass at the top of the arc with 2.2 seconds left and blew past an over-pursuing Paul George straight to the rim against one of the best defenses in the league for a game-winning layup.

But that was almost a decade ago, and James is a different player now. Those kinds of explosive rim attacks are rarer than ever. The NBA has been tracking drives for 10 seasons now, and in that timeframe, James is recording his fewest drives per game this season. In the 2019-20 season, James logged 13.9 drives per game according to Second Spectrum. This season that number is just 8.0.

As James comes down the homestretch of his race toward the scoring record, he is spending more time and accumulating more points farther and farther away from the basket.

James already has more 3-pointers made than retired sharpshooters like Dirk Nowitzki, JJ Redick and JR Smith, and he could finish this season as high as sixth on the NBA's career 3-pointers list. Despite the fact that James led the NBA in total 2-pointers made in three separate seasons, as he approaches one of the biggest milestones of his illustrious career, he is leaning on perimeter scoring more than ever.

On Nov. 26, James scored a season-high 39 points as the Lakers beat the Spurs, but 21 of those points came from downtown. That night, more than half of his shots and more than half of his points came a long way from the places where Abdul-Jabbar used to score. And as James continues to battle Father Time, his ability to chase down Abdul-Jabbar's iconic record will rely on more nights like that.