Knowing he's a week or so from breaking the NBA's all-time scoring record, LeBron James leans against a wall inside the Barclays Center in Brooklyn and ponders the idea of whether and why he was once left out of debates about the NBA's best "pure scorer."
Did he buy the premise -- that in anointing "pure scorers," media and fans had mostly focused on other superstars: Kobe Bryant, Kevin Durant, James Harden, Carmelo Anthony? James once had an ambivalent relationship with the very term "scorer." At times, he almost rejected it -- even as he topped most rivals in most scoring stats, especially the efficiency in which he scored.