Kevin Durant passes Dirk Nowitzki to become the NBA’s sixth all-time leading scorer

HOUSTON – With 15 seconds remaining in the fourth quarter, Kevin Durant stood at the free-throw line. His eyes locked on the rim, he spun the ball across his fingers, gave it a dribble, then another spin.

It was a routine he’d performed thousands of times before—not just in a Rockets jersey, but years earlier as the leading force behind some of Houston’s most persistent playoff obstacles.

The voices in bright-red seats chanting KD’s name once tried to shake him—hurling taunts in the Thunder years, then again, louder, during the Warriors era.

Tonight wasn’t that way. The arena vibrated with near-unanimous praise. But he remembered it all the same.

Over the last 18 seasons, Kevin Durant’s relationship with the sport of basketball—and with its fans—has been anything but straightforward.

In a sport that has often celebrated loyalty from its superstars, he did his own thing, unapologetically. The sharp, unpredictable turns in his journey forced the basketball world to take sides again and again and again.

Whether he was your inspiration, your parasocial villain, or the rare superstar you somehow stayed neutral on, Durant’s unique greatness did something abnormal—even among the game’s immortals.

It pulled everyone into the same place.

You watched.

And often, that was all you could do.

Durant stared at the basket, knees bent, the ball resting in his hands as low as he could comfortably hold it. He brought it up and released it.

And as he’d done at the charity stripe more than 7,500 times before: bang.

Just like that, the NBA had itself a new sixth all-time leading scorer.

CHASING DIRK: Kevin Durant passes Dirk Nowitzki to become the NBA’s 6th all-time leading scorer

With a glance down at the Houston Rockets’ schedule, Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Pelicans looked like a typical weekend-nighter against a division rival.

But everyone in attendance knew the night was far from ordinary.

Kevin Durant entered the contest with 31,544 career points. That number placed him just 16 points behind Dirk Nowitzki—a basketball legend in his own right.

It didn’t take a statistician to deduce that NBA history was probably just moments away. After all, a player could never mathematically sniff such a milestone without scoring 17 or more points lots and lots and lots of times.

Even throughout his age-37 season, Durant has made the 17-point benchmark largely an afterthought. In his 37 appearances leading up to Sunday night, he had failed to score 17 just three times. Across those same games, he had 30 or more points 14 times.

Despite the high likelihood on paper, Sunday’s game was tough sledding.

Through the first half, KD had eight points on just four attempts from the field.

Houston had a cozy, double-digit advantage for the majority of the fourth quarter—one that was never challenged.

But you’d be hard-pressed to find a Rockets fan in attendance who could even tell you the game’s score during that final stanza. The entire arena was focused on getting the ball to No. 7.

KD’s quiet scoring night didn’t slow down the team. He quietly racked up assists as his teammates feasted on the Pelicans’ Durant-focused defense. The four other Rockets starters all finished with shooting percentages above 50 percent.

Alperen Şengün finished with 21 points. Amen Thompson had 20. Jabari Smith Jr.—who had yet to score 20 points in a game in 2026 entering the night—had 32.

On a night penciled in by the basketball masses to be all about KD, he served as the distributor. As the basketball world was all but begging to sing his praises, he went out and played the game his way, unapologetically. In that sense, it was the most “KD” that KD has ever looked.

That’s not to say he didn’t let it fly at all. He finished with five made field goals on a team-leading 18 attempts, though a large chunk of those came after the game was already decided.

It was far from a looker on the stat sheet, but he gave the people what they came to see—even if it took all of 47 minutes and 45 seconds to get there.

Back in early December 2025, Kevin Durant surpassed another scoring milestone, becoming the league’s eighth player to score 31,000 points.

On the floor after that game, Rockets sideline reporter Vanessa Richardson asked Durant what he would say to his younger self if he had known he’d be accomplishing such feats.

Durant responded, “I would have said, ‘Damn right.’”

The reaction drew cheers from the Rockets crowd for its ferocity and a laugh from Vanessa—which I assumed was from KD’s bluntness. I couldn’t help but agree with the consensus; it was a totally badass line.

READ MORE: ‘Damn right’: Kevin Durant reaches 31,000 career points in Rockets’ blowout 117-98 win vs. Suns

After KD had a few minutes to settle down, he dug much deeper in the postgame presser. He talked about walking to the basketball courts as an 11-year-old kid, wanting to play against grown men. He reflected on his respect for the game and showed gratitude to the older people in his community who were patient with him while he learned the fundamentals.

In just a matter of minutes, his perspective shifted from otherworldly and unapproachable to deeply relatable and human. The brashness and audacity of his first answer were nowhere to be found. It was as if Durant took off the mask—and underneath it was that same scrawny kid from the DMV, hungry to learn and deeply reverent to those who were teaching him.

That moment stuck with me, and I figured it was worth taking another shot at the question on KD’s latest historic night.

Here’s how it went:

KPRC 2’s Michael Horton: “Kevin, earlier this season, you talked about growing up and wanting to play with the older kids and being a real student of the game. So I wanted to take a page out of Vanessa’s book: What would you say to that kid, now that he’s the sixth all-time leading scorer in the NBA?”

Kevin Durant: “Stay confident. Stay at it. It’s easy to quit, to be honest. It’s easy to have a rough patch and then say, ‘You know what? I’m going to try something else.’ So I’d tell my younger self to just stay with it. The tough days don’t last too long. You’re not as great as you think you are. You’re not as bad as you think you are. I wish I would have had that mentality a little earlier, but it all worked out for the best.”

A reflective and honest answer from KD—bravo. It might not find its way into a TikTok edit like the “Damn right” clip, but I’ll take this version of KD any day of the week.

So now you might be asking: what comes next for the Slim Reaper?

Lucky for us, he isn’t far from the next rung on the all-time scoring ladder.

After passing Dirk, KD now sits just 730 points behind the No. 5 spot.

Who’s at No. 5? None other than His Airness: Michael Jeffrey Jordan.

KD has scored around 26 points per game this season, and if he keeps up that pace, he’ll need roughly 28 games to reach MJ.

I counted the games on the Rockets’ schedule so you wouldn’t have to. That pace would put KD on track to break the mark around mid-March.

But be careful about assuming record-breaking stats before they happen—that’s how you end up on the edge of your seat in the closing seconds of a game against the 10-34 Pelicans.