James reached an unprecedented milestone in his career.

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Los Angeles Lakers star LeBron James reached an unprecedented milestone in his career, scoring 40,000 points in the league. As the number one LeBron critic, FOX commentator Skip Bayless surely had to find some arguments. He cited statistics to criticize James's lack of efficiency in reaching the 40,000-point mark, suggesting that if James's shooting percentage wasn't so low, he could have even reached 50,000 points.

Bayless said, "To put it mildly, LeBron James is just an below-average three-point shooter. He has a terrible free-throw shooting percentage, not just by superstar standards, but even by the standards of an average person, his free throws are awful. Do you know how much difficulty this adds to him? He's not a great shooter, shooting 34.7% from the three-point line in his career, ranking 118th among active players in the league. In other words, there are 117 players who haven't played as long as James, but shoot three-pointers better."

"LeBron's career free-throw shooting percentage is 73.5%, ranking 183rd among active players. That means 182 players have a higher career free-throw shooting percentage than the NBA's all-time leading scorer. Think about how many points have slipped away from LeBron because of his mediocre three-point shooting and poor free-throw shooting."

Bayless questioned why LeBron often boasts about how hard he practices but hasn't improved his free throws. There have been several seasons in his career where he fell below a 70% free-throw shooting rate. "Imagine if he had Larry Bird's 89% free-throw shooting rate, wouldn't he have reached 40,000 points even faster? I don't know, maybe he can't afford to practice, or maybe he doesn't have the talent."

To this, some fans asked Bayless, "How many three-pointers did Kareem Abdul-Jabbar shoot?" The NBA introduced the three-point line in 1979, and Abdul-Jabbar made only 1 out of 18 attempts in his career, with a free-throw shooting percentage of 72.1%, also lower than James's. This illustrates that everyone has different scoring strengths, and attacking James or Abdul-Jabbar on this point lacks persuasiveness.