Ever since draft night in 2003, it was only a matter of time until LeBron James reached 30,000 career points. The moment finally came just before the first quarter buzzer of Tuesday’s game against the Spurs, when James drained a tough mid-range jumper in Danny Green’s face.

James received some well-deserved hugs from his teammates. At 33 years and 24 days old, James surpassed Kobe Bryant as the youngest player to reach the 30,000-point milestone by more than a year. Bryant reached it at 34 years, 104 days.

Folks from all over, including his family, congratulated The King on social media, even though LeBron had already congratulated himself before he actually reached the milestone.

It was such a big moment that even Skip Bayless gave LeBron some praise!

Well, not really.

James will pass Julius Erving for No. 7 all-time before the end of the month. Even with LeBron score at a far higher rate than Dirk Nowitzki these days, he’ll probably have to wait until next season to pass The Big Mummy.

However, he still has his work cut out if he wants to pass the NBA’s all-time scoring leader, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. To surpass Abdul-Jabbar’s 38,387 points, James would need to average 24 points over the next five seasons at 70 games per year. Considering James’ career average is 27.1 points and this season, at 33 years old, has been among the best of his career, that’s certainly doable.

About Jesse Kramer

Jesse is a writer and editor for The Comeback. He has also worked for SI.com and runs The Catch and Shoot, a college basketball website based in Chicago. He is a graduate of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. Follow Jesse on Twitter @Jesse_Kramer.