Tony Parker is not done yet. Instead of seeing out his career with the San Antonio Spurs, the 36-year-old decided to step away from his comfort zone and take on a new challenge with the Charlotte Hornets.
Parker appears to have a few more years left in the tank, and if all goes according to plan, he could become only the 45th player to enter the NBA's exclusive 20,000-point club. This is via Ben Rohrbach of Yahoo! Sports.
In 17 years with the Spurs franchise, Parker has already amassed a total of 18,943 career points. He is now just 1,057 points short of reaching this elusive milestone. However, being in the twilight of his career, Parker's scoring numbers have continued to drop over the past few years.
Last season, Parker only averaged 7.7 points per contest — his lowest ever output in his entire career. The only other time Parker averaged single-digits in scoring was during his rookie campaign, in which he put up 9.2 points per game.
In 55 games, Parker scored a total of 421 points last year. Assuming that he is able to score at least 500 points this coming season — a mark that he has easily surpassed in each of his 16 seasons prior to the last — then he would need to play at least one more year after that to reach 20,000 points.
The good news for Parker is that he recently signed a two-year deal with the Hornets. This guarantees at least two more playing years for the Frenchman, and all but assures his entry to the highly-distinguished 20,000-point club.
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