  In this paper we explore the properties of a bounded linear operator defined
on a Banach space, in light of operator norm attainment. Using Birkhoff-James
orthogonality techniques, we give a necessary condition for a bounded linear
operator attaining norm at a particular point of the unit sphere. We prove a
number of corollaries to establish the importance of our study. As part of our
exploration, we also obtain a characterization of smooth Banach spaces in terms
of operator norm attainment and Birkhoff-James orthogonality. Restricting our
attention to $ l_{p}^{2} (p \in \mathbb{N}\setminus \{ 1 \})$ spaces, we obtain
an upper bound for the number of points at which any linear operator, which is
not a scalar multiple of an isometry, may attain norm.
