What are the 10 most unbreakable records in sports?

Sports are truly amazing for a lot of reasons. For example, just when you think there will never be anyone better, along comes another player who makes you question everything.

After Michael Jordan, it was almost a certainty that there would be no one who could come close to him, and then came LeBron James. After Babe Ruth, there was Barry Bonds and then Shohei Ohtani. Sports continue to evolve and record books continue to be rewritten.

But which records are ones we should etch in stone? Let’s take a look:

10 most unbreakable sports records

10. Rickey Henderson: 1,406 career stolen bases

Henderson’s larger-than-life personality was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to his career. He was unstoppable on the basepaths. Never before had a player reached base and so quickly turned a single into a double or triple as often as Henderson did. His 1,406 steals are 468 more than Lou Brock’s 938 steals, the second-most in MLB history.

If you add up the top four players in steals active today, they equal just 1,191 career steals, 215 fewer than Henderson. Take into account that no active player has had 75 steals in a season and only one has had 70 or more steals in a season (Ronald Acuna, 73 in 2023) and this record looks impossible to surpass.

9. Pete Maravich: 44.2 PPG career average and 44.5 PPG single-season average at LSU

Maravich was a special talent and his scoring prowess knew no bounds. He currently owns the top three single-season scoring averages in college basketball history, giving him a career average of 44.2 points per game. His best season came in 1969-70, when he put up an eye-popping 44.5 points per game while playing for LSU. Only one player other than Maravich has averaged 40 points per game in a season: Johnny Neumann, who put up 40.1 points per game for Mississippi during the 1970-71 season, one year after Maravich’s last season in college.

Since 2000, only one player has been able to average even 30 points per game in a season — Chris Clemons, who recorded 30.1 points per game during the 2018-19 season for Campbell. That puts both Maravich’s career and single-season averages well out of reach for anyone in the foreseeable future.

8. John Stockton: 15,806 career assists and 3,265 career steals

Stockton was a maestro on offense and a pest on defense. Combine that with his longevity, and you get two of the most incredible records in basketball history. His passing ability led him to compile 15,806 assists in his 19 seasons in the NBA, 3,500+ more than Chris Paul, who is currently second on the list. That is a massive gap that feels unreachable, but looking closer it is even more unlikely than that. No player has had 1,000 assists in one year since Stockton did so in the 1994-95 season. The highest in the last 20 years was Paul in 2007-08 with 925. That means the 39-year-old Paul would need four more full seasons at his career high in assists to top Stockton.

Paul is also just under 600 steals behind Stockton, who is the only player in basketball history to record 3,000 thefts. That number seems unfathomable in today’s game; Paul is the only active player with 200 or more steals in a single season, which he did twice (2007-08 and 2008-09).

7. Michael Phelps: 28 total Olympic medals won, 23 Olympic gold medals won

The Olympic run put together by Phelps is one-of-a-kind. His 28 medals are 10 more than any other participant, but what separates him is his pure domination in the sport. His 23 Olympic golds are 14 more than any other athlete! No other athlete in history has even 10 gold medals in Olympic competitions. To put that in perspective, if you add together the gold medals of two other famous Olympic swimmers — Katie Ledecky and Mark Spitz, who had nine each — they would have a combined 18 Olympic golds.

6. Nolan Ryan: 5,714 career strikeouts

Everyone knows Randy Johnson was a strikeout machine and that Roger Clemens pitched, and with success, for a very long time. Despite that, neither one is even close to Nolan Ryan when it comes to strikeouts. Ryan’s 5,714 strikeouts are 839 more than Randy Johnson’s 4,875 K’s, the second-most in the game’s history.

If you factor in the current crop of MLB pitchers, the record looks even more unattainable. Justin Verlander leads all active players with 3,416 punchouts — 2,298 strikeouts fewer than Ryan’s pristine mark.

5. Jerry Rice: 22,895 career receiving yards

Easily the best receiver in NFL history, Rice is in a category all his own. He is the only player to surpass the 20,000-yard receiving mark and is 5,403 yards ahead of Larry Fitzgerald, who comes in at second on the all-time list. That means even if Fitzgerald came out of retirement and set the single-season record with 2,000 receiving yards in two straight years, he would still be 1,403 yards short of tying Rice.

4. Emmitt Smith: 18,355 career rushing yards

Smith, the longtime Cowboys running back, was impressively durable in his career. He played in 226 regular-season career games and finished with an absurd 18,355 rushing yards. That is 1,629 rushing yards more than Walter Payton for most in NFL history.

The logic says if a running back plays long enough, he could catch Smith, but that isn’t even true. One of the NFL’s longest-tenured backs was the recently retired Frank Gore, who trails him by 2,355 rushing yards, despite playing a full season longer than Smith.

Only one active running back has even 10,000 rushing yards: Derrick Henry, who ranks No. 19 on the NFL leaderboard with 11,423 rushing yards.

3. Wayne Gretzky: 2,857 career points and 1,963 career assists

Famously nicknamed “The Great One,” Gretzky was on a level all his own. Fantasy hockey used to have to split his player stats into assists and goals because he was too valuable as just one player. He could swing the entire league. To put the career points and assists record into perspective, Gretzky is the only player to reach 2,000 points in the history of the NHL and surpassed it by 857 points!

To put it in today’s terms, Sidney Crosby and Alex Ovechkin both have more than 1,580 points, while Jaromir Jagr sits in second place all-time with 1,921 career points.

Gretzky also holds the NHL record with 1,963 career assists. Only 14 players all-time have even registered 1,000 assists. No one, besides Gretzky, has passed 1,250 assists.

2. Tom Brady: 102,614 career passing yards, 737 career TD passes, oldest QB to win a Super Bowl (43 years, 6 months, and 4 days), 286 career wins; playoffs included

Patrick Mahomes has had an electric start to his career, but Brady has set an almost impossible bar to reach. The G.O.A.T’s 102,614 passing yards (regular season and postseason combined) are almost 17,000 more than Drew Brees for the second-most all-time and over 23,000 more than Peyton Manning for third all-time. He also has 129 more passing TDs than any other QB, playoffs included.

The most amazing thing, though, is he has 86 MORE all-time wins than any other quarterback. Second-place is Manning with 200, which means even if he came out of retirement and led a team to a perfect 20-0 record through the next four seasons, Manning would still be six wins short of tying Brady.

If Manning somehow did that, he’d also pass Brady as the oldest quarterback to win the Super Bowl, but it’s a tall task imagining anyone beating Brady in that regard, either.

1. Wilt Chamberlain: Highest PPG average in a season (50.4), highest MPG average in a season (48.5) and most points in a single game (100)

It should come as a shock to no one that Chamberlain holds the top spot in multiple places. His average of 50.4 points per game in a season is laughably good, considering no one but “Wilt the Stilt” has even averaged 40 points per game in a season. James Harden’s scoring surge during the 2018-19 season put him at 36.1 points per game, 14.3 per game fewer than Chamberlain’s best year.

Everyone also knows about his 100-point game, which is a remarkable feat; the only player to top 80 points was Kobe Bryant, with his 81-point barrage in 2006.

The most unbreakable, though, might be his average of 48.5 minutes per game, considering NBA games only last 48 minutes. There would need to be a lot of overtimes, and those players would need to play every minute of every game on top of that.

Honorable mentions:

Bill Russell: 11 NBA championships

Cy Young: 749 complete games

Barry Bonds: 73 home runs in a single season

Joey Chestnut: 83 hot dogs eaten in 10 minutes

Simone Biles: 23 gold medals at World Championships (next best is 9)

Cal Ripken Jr.: 2,632 consecutive games played

Usain Bolt: ran 100-meter dash in 9.58 seconds