National Basketball Association all-time assists leaders 1946-2023

John Stockton is the all-time assists leader of the National Basketball Association with a total of 15,806 assists in his career. The highest ranked player still active in the NBA is Chris Paul of the Phoenix Suns, who has a total of over 11,500 assists to his name.

Basketball legends

In basketball, an assist is awarded to the player who passes the ball to a teammate to score. John Stockton, who spent his entire career from 1984 to 2003 as a point guard for the Utah Jazz, is the runaway leader for assists in the NBA. One of the few still active players on the list is LeBron James, who currently sits in fourth place with over 10 thousand assists. The basketball legend, who currently plays for the Los Angeles Lakers having moved from the Cleveland Cavaliers in 2018, also holds the record in terms of NBA all-time scoring leaders.

King of the Playoffs

LeBron is the undisputed king of the playoffs, having scored a total of 7,857 in playoff games during his career. In his stints at the Cleveland Cavaliers and Miami Heat, James made the playoffs for 14 straight seasons from 2004/05 to 2017/18. He made a high profile move to the Los Angeles Lakers at the start of the 2018/19 season, but everything did not go quite to plan initially – James missed the playoffs for the first time since 2005 and failed to reach the NBA Finals for the first time since 2010. However, the Lakers then went on to claim their record-equaling 17th NBA championship title in 2020, defeating Miami Heat 4-2 in the finals. LeBron’s move has also undoubtedly been a commercial success for the Lakers – the regular season home attendance went up in the 2018/19 season and the franchise value reached a record 5.9 billion U.S. dollars in 2022.