Last night against the Boston Celtics, LeBron James scored double-digits points in his 700th consecutive game. He's the third player ever to do - Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Michael Jordan are the others - and it came on a night where he also passed Tim Duncan for 14th all-time in scoring.
The last time LeBron failed to score at least 10 points in a game was on Jan. 5, 2007 vs. the Milwaukee Bucks. LeBron, who was 22 at the time, made 3-13 shots against the Bucks and finished with eight points in 42 minutes.
A lot has changed since then, both with LeBron and in the world as a whole. A few examples:
- Barack Obama wouldn't be elected President for over another year.
- David Stern was still the NBA's commissioner.
- Warriors guard Stephen Curry was a freshman at Davidson and not yet a household name. The night LeBron's streak began - on Jan. 6 vs. the then-New Jersey Nets - Curry set the single-season freshman scoring record at Davidson.
- Richard Jefferson, by the way, played for the Nets when LeBron's streak started. So did Vince Carter, Eddie House and Jason Kidd.
- LeBron had yet to play in an NBA Finals; his first ever appearance vs. the Spurs in the 2007 NBA Finals was over six months away. LeBron had also yet to win his first MVP award.
- Twitter, which was founded on March 21, 2006, was less than a year old.
- LeBron is the only Cavalier from 2007 still on the roster. The Cavs' starting five vs. the Bucks was LeBron, Eric Snow, Drew Gooden, Larry Hughes and Zydrunas Ilgauskas.
- Current Cav Mo Williams, current Warrior Andrew Bogut, and former Ohio State star Michael Redd played for the Bucks in 2007.
- The first iPhone wouldn't come out until June 29, 2007 - over six months after LeBron's last single-digit output.
- Kyrie Irving was 14 years old the last time LeBron scored less than 10 points in a game. Kevin Love was a senior in high school. Cavs coach Tyronn Lue was still an active player and in the midst of his second-to-last season with the Atlanta Hawks.
LeBron, even at 700 straight games with at least 10 points, is well behind Abdul-Jabbar and Jordan. Abdul-Jabbar scored at least 10 points in a game for 787 straight games, meaning LeBron would pass him sometime next season if he can keep up his streak. To pass Jordan, who scored 10 points in 866 straight games, James would have to score at least 10 points in this season's final 21 games, all of next season and 63 games in the 2017-18 season. This, though, assumes LeBron plays in every game between now and then, which probably won't happen.