The month of December has brought an abundance of outstanding achievements in the NBA, some of which belonged to Los Angeles Lakers players LeBron James and DeAndre Jordan.
James recorded his 100th triple-double on Thursday, spoiled by the 108-95 loss to the Memphis Grizzlies. The four-time NBA champion became the fifth player ever to take his triple-double tally to triple digits; Russell Westbrook leads the all-time list with 189 ahead of Oscar Robertson, Magic Johnson and Jason Kidd.
Meanwhile, DeAndre Jordan reached his own milestone moment the following day, chalking up the 10,000th rebound of his career in the 116-95 victory over the Oklahoma City Thunder.
It turns out Jordan only learned about his feat after the game.
“I didn’t know, wish someone would have told me during the game,” the 33-year-old center said. “But I think it’s super cool. With this being my 14th season and just the gradual steps I’ve taken in my career early on and just building and trying to make that something, this is a great benchmark for me. It’s great to be among those other [41] players to have done that, so that’s awesome.”
Jordan finished the night with 10,002 boards to his name, ranking 41st among the all-time leaders taking into consideration NBA history only. James features right behind the Lakers’ big man with 9,838 rebounds — with L.A.’s other center, Dwight Howard, sitting in 11h with 14,401 rebounds.
Adding numbers from before the NBA/ABA merger, Jordan’s record ranks 45th on the all-time list.
Jordan says he focused on improving his rebounding skills inspired by the “Grit n’ Grind” era in Memphis, especially after those Grizzlies caused his L.A. Clippers plenty of troubles over the last decade.
“Early on in my career I was trying to find where I could be successful and where I could be able to stay on the floor as much as possible and it was defending, getting rebounds, altering and blocking shots,” the center said
“Rebounding was just kind of something that I fell in love with, especially after getting our ass kicked a few times in the playoffs by a tough Memphis team who was always crashing the glass hard. So that made me take a little bit more pride in it and it’s something that I’ve developed over my career and something that I kind of got OK at.”
Among the other moments of greatness taking place on the NBA’s courts this month, the Grizzlies beat the Thunder 152-79 on Dec. 2 — making the 73-point win margin the largest victory in the league’s history.
Meanwhile, Golden State Warriors icon Steph Curry needs nine 3-pointers to break Ray Allen’s all-time record of 2,973 shots made from beyond the arc.
Jordan didn’t receive game ball despite rebounds milestone
After the game, Jordan revealed he didn’t get to keep the game ball after reaching the all-time milestone. However, the center didn’t make a big deal out of the lack of acknowledgment of his feat.
“No, nobody gave me anything,” he said. “I don’t know, tough crowd. Tough group [laughs].”
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