LeBron James passed Jason Kidd for third place on the NBA career assists list on Sunday afternoon in Philadelphia. FINAL: Philadelphia 76ers 131, Indiana Pacers 124. James finished with 15 points, seven rebounds and a season-high 11 assists, and he needed the full 11: he had entered the game exactly 11 assists behind Kidd’s career total.
How to watch: Indiana Pacers at Philadelphia 76ers, Sunday, November 15, 2026, 1 p.m. ET at Xfinity Mobile Arena, Philadelphia
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LeBron James Assists Record: Two Passes In The Final Minutes
The climb finished in the last minutes of the fourth quarter, in order. First came the tie: as theScore’s game report records, James recorded his 12,091st career assist when he found Dean Wade on a backdoor cut, drawing level with Kidd, and the NBA marked the moment on its official X account. Then came the pass that moved him ahead for good: ESPN reports that James passed Kidd with a feed to guard VJ Edgecombe for a layup, assist number 12,092.
The performance came three days after James sat out Thursday’s game in Toronto for low back and sciatica management, and passing was the whole shape of his return. He shot 5 of 8 from the field and 5 of 6 from the line, added one block against two turnovers in 33 minutes, and ran the offence as a distributor first. It fits the pattern of his season against this opponent: as ESPN notes in the same report, his two highest assist totals of the season have both come against Indiana, the 11 on Sunday and 10 in the first meeting on October 28.
Only Stockton And Paul Stand Ahead Of Him
The updated career list now reads John Stockton at 15,806 assists, the retired Chris Paul at 12,552, James at 12,092 and Kidd at 12,091, as the StatMuse career assists table shows after Sunday’s game. The next step is a live one: ESPN puts James 461 assists away from passing Paul for second place, a gap a full season of this passing can close. Stockton’s mark, more than 3,700 assists away, is not in reach, and nobody in the game pretends otherwise.
Kidd himself saw this coming, because he has coached the player now passing him. Kidd was an assistant on the Los Angeles Lakers staff from 2019 to 2021, James’s first two seasons there, and he said this summer that his own game is the closest comparison to James’s. “He has the ability to make plays for his teammates,” Kidd said on the All-Star Magazine show, as ClutchPoints reported. “His IQ, understanding what is going to happen before it happens, is extremely high.”
The scale of the passing is easy to underrate next to the scoring, and the scoring is already his alone: James passed 16,000 career field goals earlier this month, a first in league history that iimiTV covered when it happened, and he also sits first all time in points, games and minutes. The assists have produced offence on their own scale: a league release noted on November 10, as Wire Report carried it, that James’s career assists had generated 28,268 points for his teammates, with Zydrunas Ilgauskas the top recipient at 785 assisted baskets.
Brown And Maxey Carried The Scoring Without Embiid
The milestone landed inside a real win, earned without Joel Embiid. As NBC Sports Philadelphia reported, Jaylen Brown scored 31 points and Tyrese Maxey added 27, the pair combining for 58 as the Sixers improved to 11-3. The teams went into halftime tied, and Philadelphia pulled ahead in the second half to close out a seven-point win, their sixth at home this season.
Indiana’s resistance ran through a familiar Toronto name: Pascal Siakam led the Pacers with 31 points on 12 of 19 shooting. James’s fingerprints were on the game’s turning stretches anyway, including a no-look pass to Brown late in the second quarter that put Philadelphia in front after Indiana had led 55-54, a play Athlon Sports singled out from the afternoon. The trend line behind it is now a matter of record: in games where James records at least seven assists this season, the Sixers are 6-0.
The 76ers play again on Monday night, at the Brooklyn Nets, and the chase resumes with it. James, at 41, is averaging 15.1 points, 7.2 rebounds and 6.9 assists this season, numbers that describe a player whose team now runs through his passing as much as his scoring. Third place on the assists list, behind only two of the purest point guards the league has produced, is where that version of his game has carried him.
