Skip Bayless couldn't let LeBron James's remarkable feat of scoring 40,000+ career points occur without unwarranted criticism. Skip Bayless has made a career of discussing LeBron James and highlighting supposed shortcomings. Bayless has been the most vocal opponent to James, so his harsh critiques of James is often expected.

But, his comments on his podcast The Skip Bayless Show reached seemingly a new level of hate for the four-time NBA Champion. Instead of acknowledging how remarkable James scoring 40,000 career points is, he harped on James's struggles shooting free throws and three-pointers throughout his career.

“I'm just telling you the truth. LeBron James is a below-average, I'm being nice about that, three-point shooter. LeBron James is a lousy free throw shooter by superstar standards, heck, by anybody's standards. He's just a lousy free-throw shooter. Do you realize how that heightens the degree of difficulty for him? It's been so much harder because he's not a great shooter. So think about this, career from three, LeBron is 34.7%. Of the current active players in the league, that ranks 118th career-wise, 118th. That means 117 other players who haven't played as long as LeBron, but however long they've played, their career better from three than LeBron. He's 118th.

He continued, “Now let's go to free-throw shooting. LeBron's career is 73.5 of all current active players. That ranks 183rd. That means 182 current active players for their careers, not as long as LeBron's, but for their careers have shot better from the free throw line than the all-time leading NBA scorer. Think about that. Think about how many hundreds and hundreds of points he left on the table. Because he was a below-average three-point shooter and a lousy free throw shooter.”

After presenting additional statistics to support his argument regarding James's challenges with free throws and three-pointers, he emphasized his main point.

“What if LeBron James had been Larry Bird from the free throw line vaulting from 73.5 all the way up to 89% for his career? Do you realize how much faster he would've gotten to 40,000 points way faster? It's always perplexed me, mystified me, how a LeBron James, who always posts and gloats so much about he's in the lab, never got in the free throw lab. I don't know why, maybe he did, maybe it just didn't work. Maybe that's just one gift he was not blessed with.”

Skip Bayless is undoubtedly one of the biggest haters of all time, effortlessly shifting a significant event in LeBron James's career into a debate on his alleged shortcomings. Nevermind the fact that the Lakers star has improved his three-point percentage to 40.5% this season, an increase from his 34.7% career average. He's also increased his free throw shooting percentage to 74.1% this season. Context certainly matters and it appears as if James has, indeed, been “in the lab”.

It's often said that if you don't have haters, you're doing something wrong. As the NBA world sees, LeBron is certainly playing the game the right way and is building an incredible legacy for himself.