Magic Johnson Averaged More Assists Per Game Than Anyone in NBA History

Magic Johnson averaged 11.2 assists a game for his career, the highest figure ever recorded. He won five championships and three Finals MVP awards, and he reached the NBA Finals nine times in twelve full seasons.

Johnson finished with career averages of 19.5 points, 11.2 assists and 7.2 rebounds across 906 games. He won three MVP awards and led the league in assists four times. The rebounding number is the giveaway: he was a 6 foot 9 point guard, and he could see the entire floor over the top of the defense assigned to stop him.

His first season ends the argument on its own. In Game 6 of the 1980 Finals, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was out with a sprained ankle, so the Lakers started their rookie point guard at center. Johnson scored 42 points, took 15 rebounds, handed out 7 assists and made all 14 of his free throws in a title-clinching win. He was 20 years old and he was named Finals MVP.

The nine Finals trips in twelve years are the real body of work. Showtime was not a style so much as a decision about tempo made by one player: Los Angeles ran because Johnson could deliver the ball ahead of the defense accurately at full speed, and no team in that era could match the pace without conceding the rebounding that fed it.

Stephen Curry is the strongest modern counter and has changed the sport more than Johnson did. He has four championships, two MVPs including the only unanimous one, and he rebuilt where every player on the floor stands. Oscar Robertson averaged a triple double for an entire season in 1962. John Stockton finished with 15,806 assists, a record so far ahead that nobody will approach it.

Stockton has the volume and Curry has the influence. What neither has is the peak playoff record. Johnson went to the Finals in three quarters of his full seasons and won five, and he did it running an offense in which he was simultaneously the best passer, the tallest guard and the player deciding what everyone else did next.

The verdict: Magic Johnson. Five rings, nine Finals, and the best passing the game has seen.