Never say never. There’s a slim chance that one day someone will join LeBron James in the NBA’s 40,000-point club.

James crossed the 40,000-point mark on Saturday night, extending the NBA all-time scoring record that he claimed from Kareem Abdul-Jabbar last season.

James already has added about 1,700 points of distance between himself and Abdul-Jabbar’s total of 38,387. It might be time to add James’ NBA scoring record to the list of “records that never will be broken,” like Cal Ripken’s 2,632 consecutive games played in baseball, Wayne Gretzky’s 2,857 points in the NHL or the UConn women’s basketball team winning 111 consecutive games.

Wilt Chamberlain once averaged 50.4 points in a season in the NBA. Nobody else ever has come close to that. The highest any other player averaged in a full season was Elgin Baylor’s 38.3 per game; if someone averaged that much for an entire career, they would have had to play all 82 games for almost 13 seasons just to get to get to 40,000 points.

“Nobody will ever, ever touch it,” Miami forward Kevin Love, one of James’ former Cleveland teammates, said last year when James broke Abdul-Jabbar’s record.

And remember, James might play another season. Or two. Or more. He easily could reach 43,000 or 44,000 by the time he’s finished. That will only make the record more out of reach.

Some reasons why it’s such a long shot that someone else will reach the milestone: