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Why did LeBron congratulate himself for a thing he hasn’t done yet? An investigation

LeBron James, who is 7 points shy of joining the rarified air of 30,000 points in his NBA career, took some time out of his busy schedule to issue a… congratulations to himself on the achievement, which he has not yet reached.

Bron went on Instagram this morning to pen a long congrats to the younger version of himself.

Wanna be one of the first to Congratulate you on this accomplishment/achievement tonight that you’ll reach! Only a handful has reach/seen it too and while I know it’s never been a goal of yours from the beginning try(please try) to take a moment for yourself on how you’ve done it! The House you’re about to be apart of has only 6 seats in it(as of now) but 1 more will be added and you should be very proud and honored to be invited inside. There’s so many people to thank who has help this even become possible(so thank them all) and when u finally get your moment(alone) to yourself smile, look up to the higher skies and say THANK YOU! So with that said, Congrats again Young King ! 1 Love! #striveforgreatness #thekidfromakron

A post shared by LeBron James (@kingjames) on

The Cavs forward wrote:

“Wanna be one of the first to Congratulate you on this accomplishment/achievement tonight that you’ll reach! Only a handful has reach/seen it too and while I know it’s never been a goal of yours from the beginning try(please try) to take a moment for yourself on how you’ve done it! The House you’re about to be apart of has only 6 seats in it(as of now) but 1 more will be added and you should be very proud and honored to be invited inside. There’s so many people to thank who has help this even become possible(so thank them all) and when u finally get your moment(alone) to yourself smile, look up to the higher skies and say THANK YOU! So with that said, Congrats again Young King ! 1 Love! #striveforgreatness #thekidfromakron”

There’s some grammatical errors here (Bron, hit me up if you need a copy editor), but LeBron also seems to have made a mistake in claiming that there are “only 6 seats” in the 30k point club.

From my exhaustive research (googling how many players have 30,000 points), it appears that seven players (Kareem Abdul-Jabar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Wilt Chamberlain, Dirk Nowitzki, and Julius Irving) have reached the 30,000 point mark.

Regardless, it’s hilarious that LeBron hasn’t actually achieved the thing that he’s congratulating himself for here, but the odds are certainly with him. One of the greatest aspects of LeBron’s career is his ridiculous consistency. ESPN broke down the likeliness of LeBron scoring 7 points tonight:

“The last time James failed to score seven points in a regular-season game was Dec. 29, 2004, during his second season in the league. He’s scored at least 10 in 836 consecutive games, the second-longest streak in NBA history. He’s averaging 26.8 points per game.”

Ok so LeBron is certainly going to get to 30k points tonight.

He’s actually done a pretty good job of getting out ahead of all the other congratulations. By congratulating himself before he actually gets the thing, he’s assured that he’ll be the first to do so. That’s just PR 101 right there. Take notes.

The Cavs largely suck right now, so maybe LeBron is just shading the rest of his normal ass, non-30k-point-having teammates.

The LeBron social media machine is a powerful and complex being. We have only begun to understand its intricacies.