All-Time Leading NBA Bench Scorer Announces Retirement

He hasn't played since the 2021-22 season, and now, after a 17-year NBA career in which he averaged a tick under 14 points per game, the NBA’s all-time leading bench scorer Lou Williams has called it a career. He made the announcement on social media with a slickly-produced "retirement cut", narrated by his daughter.

https://t.co/YLp3SyIPUm 🤝🏾. Much love. And thank you

— Lou Williams (@TeamLou23) June 18, 2023

The 36-year-old Williams is a three-time Sixth Man of the Year award winner and was the ultimate second-unit scorer. He appeared in 1,123 career games but only had 122 starts. He scored an NBA-record 13,396 points off the bench, which is 2,117 more than Jamal Crawford's second-best mark.

Williams featured off the bench for six different NBA teams, with seven seasons for the Philadelphia 76ers, four seasons each for the Los Angeles Clippers and Atlanta Hawks, two seasons for the Los Angeles Lakers, and a season for the Toronto Raptors and Houston Rockets.

Lou Will recently told Draymond Green on his podcast that he nearly retired twice in the middle his career — once when he got traded to Toronto, and again when he got traded to the Clippers in 2017. Upon his arrival in LA, it was his third team in six months. "I'm there, I'm frowning, I literally don't want to be there." But head coach Doc Rivers talked him out of it at the time.