Skip Bayless Criticizes LeBron James, The NBA’s All-Time Leading Scorer, For Not Being Better At Scoring

Skip Bayless has seemingly been obsessed with LeBron James for his entire career. The former ESPN and current Fox Sports personality has been criticizing LeBron James any chance he got for two decades now.

You’d think that at this point, it would be pretty hard to criticize LeBron on anything to do with playing basketball. He’s the league’s all-time leading scorer, and in the eyes of most is at worst the second-best player of all-time.

But, leave it up to Skip Bayless to find a criticism of the first person to score 40,000 points in an NBA career. LeBron is still dominating at 39-years-old and in his 21st season. He’s averaging 25.3/7.1/8.0 on incredible efficiency and an improved three-point stroke.

That’s not good enough for Skip Bayless. He’s criticizing LeBron James for not scoring more.

Just telling you the truth, LeBron James is a below average, I’m being nice about that three point shooter. LeBron James is a lousy free throw shooter by superstar standards. Heck, by anybody’s standards, he’s a lousy free throw shooter. Do you realize how that heightens the degree of difficulty for him? It’s been so much harder, because he’s not a great shooter. So think about. For his career, From three LeBron is 34.7%. Of the current active players in the league that ranks 118th career-wise. That means 117 other players who haven’t played as long as LeBron, but however long they’ve played their career, are better from three than LeBron, he’s 118.

Now, let’s go to free throw shooting. LeBron, career, is 73.5%. Of all current active players, that ranks 183rd. That means 182 current active players for their careers not as long as LeBron’s. But for their careers have shot better from the free throw line than the all-time leading NBA score. Think about that. Think about how many hundreds and hundreds of points he left on the table. Because he was a below average three point shooter and a lousy free throw shooter. Think about it. Think about how many times he’s gone to the free throw line and missed at 73.5%. Just for the record, what if he had shot 10 points 10 percentage points higher at the free throw line? The way Jordan and Kobe did they were both 84% career from the free throw line. Magic was 85% Larry Bird was 89%. What if LeBron James had been Larry Bird from the free throw line? Vaulting from 73.5 all the way up to 89% for his career? Do you realize how much faster he would have gotten to 40,000 points? Way faster. It’s always perplexed me, mystified me. How a LeBron James, who always posts and gloat so much about he’s in the lab, Never got in the free throw lab. I don’t know why, maybe he did. Maybe it just didn’t work. Maybe that’s just one gift he was not blessed with.

Oh, Skip. He truly doesn’t know ball.

Yes, the free throw percentage is not good. That’s his one valid point. That being said, he seems to think it’s incredibly easy to shoot 85-90% from the line. It’s not. Should LeBron James have shot a better percentage? Yes. But, it’s not as if he was down under 50% from the line.

As for the three-point percentage, it’s important to understand exactly what kind of three-point looks a player is getting. LeBron had to take a lot of contested threes late in the shot clock. Those are going to be converted a much lower percentage than spot-up, open threes that other guys are getting.

LeBron James is actually over 40% from three this year. And, his best years from deep previously were with the Heat, when he was getting more spot-up looks than he ever was before. Is he an elite shooter? No. But he’s not nearly as bad as Skip Bayless is making him out to be.

The big question is, who is Skip Bayless going to talk about after LeBron retires? Hopefully, nobody.