A few seasons ago, James Harden averaged 36 points. Devin Booker once scored 70 in a game.

More players are scoring far more now than when LeBron James began his NBA career in 2003-04. Tracy McGrady led the league with 28 points per game that year, a mark now surpassed by nine players.

With the faster pace of the game and the abundance of 3-pointers, there are too many opportunities for players to score points. But one look at Harden shows how difficult it will be for even an elite scorer to keep it up long enough to challenge any scoring mark when James finally retires.

Harden averaged 36.1 points in the 2019-20 season and 34.3 the following season. If a player maintains that kind of performance for 75 games in a season, he’ll reach 40,000 points in just 15 years, though that probably won’t be enough to reach where James leaves the record, which now stands at 38,390.

But then the circumstances changed. A trade, first to Brooklyn and then to Philadelphia, meant trading shots with others, and a serious hamstring injury robbed Harden of his explosiveness. He hasn’t even averaged 25 points since then, and is currently under 20 per game.

Count Booker among those who think no one can catch James.

“Maybe you can do it for five or 10 seasons, but 20 seasons of what he (James) did, I don’t think it’s ever going to happen again,” the Phoenix Suns star said.

Still, maybe there are players who have a chance.

Maybe it’s Luka Doncic, who, like James, lived up to the hype that picked him up in the NBA. Or maybe it’s Victor Vembanyama, who will try to do the same from next season.

He could be a player yet to be born, just like James when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar set the previous record in 1984.

Here are some possibilities:

Jason Tatum, Boston

Tatum met James in the 2018 Eastern Conference Finals, when he scored more points in the postseason than any rookie other than Abdul-Jabbar. The Celtics forward has averaged more than 26 points the past two seasons, is now nearing 31 points per game, and won’t turn 25 until next month. If he sticks to his average over the next 13 seasons, he could face James again.

Luka Doncic, Dallas

Playing professionally in Spain before coming to the United States allowed him to quickly rise in the NBA, and he averaged more than 27 points in four of five seasons. Doncic has scored over 8,500 points and will only turn 24 at the end of February.

Devin BookerPhoenix

Booker can be as productive as anyone in the NBA. He showed that when he scored 70 points in Boston in 2017 at the age of 20, and when he had three straight games of 40 or more points. The attacking defenseman just turned 26 and already has 12,000 points. If he improves his average a bit over the next 12 years, it could get interesting.

Giannis Antetokounmpo, Milwaukee

He may never have had a real chance to break the scoring record after scoring just 525 points (6.8 per game) as a rookie. But few players work harder than the Greek, who appears to have replaced James as the NBA’s most unstoppable athletic force. He just turned 28 and is coming off his fourth straight season averaging over 28 points. If you repeat this over the next 10 years, it could be around 38,000 points.

Victor Vembanyama, France

The 19-year-old forward will enter the NBA next June as the most widely read prospect since James 20 years ago. At seven feet three inches tall, but with the range and ball handling skills of a much smaller player, he has plenty of ways to score. And it will have to be done often to catch up with James.