The NBA’s all-time scoring list is a ladder built out of nights like these: a regular-season game that looks ordinary on the schedule, until one possession late turns it into history.
On Sunday, Kevin Durant climbed to sixth all-time in career points as the Houston Rockets beat the New Orleans Pelicans 119–110. Durant entered the night needing 17 points to move past Dirk Nowitzki’s 31,560, and he got there in the most understated way possible, at the line, late, with the game already leaning Houston’s direction. Two free throws in the final seconds pushed Durant to 31,562 career points, sliding him just ahead of Nowitzki on the list.
It was a milestone that felt perfectly Durant: not theatrical, not staged, not paused for a ceremony midstream, just another sequence within the flow of a game, added to a résumé that has always been more inevitability than spectacle.
The moment Kevin Durant passed Dirk Nowitzki for 6th all-time in scoring 🙌
The Easy Money Sniper has his eyes set on Michael Jordan at 5th 👀 pic.twitter.com/Fm9qp1PV6u
— NBA on ESPN (@ESPNNBA) January 19, 2026
The Rockets, importantly, didn’t treat the night like it belonged to one man alone. Jabari Smith Jr. powered Houston with a season-high 32 points and seven threes, giving the home crowd the kind of heat-check performance that turns a “KD milestone” into a complete team win. Houston also won the possession game the way serious teams do: the Rockets grabbed 17 offensive rebounds and converted them into 27 second-chance points, repeatedly forcing New Orleans to defend longer than it wanted to.
Durant finished with 18 points and eight assists, and even on a night where his scoring didn’t erupt, his presence still organized everything, where help came from, which matchups bent first, and how the Pelicans had to allocate their attention.
New Orleans had its own productivity, Trey Murphy III scored 21, Zion Williamson 20, but Houston’s control was real, especially in the fourth-quarter stretch that mattered most: a decisive run that separated the game for good.
Then came the postgame moment that made the milestone feel less like a statistic and more like a passing of the torch. After Durant moved ahead of him, Nowitzki recorded a video message that played for Durant, congratulating him and praising him as one of the smoothest scorers the game has ever seen.
From one legend to another 🤝
Dirk Nowitzki congratulates Kevin Durant on becoming 𝟔𝐭𝐡 𝐚𝐥𝐥-𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞 in @NBA scoring.@KDTrey5 | #AllFire pic.twitter.com/NPzptdzDRG
— Houston Rockets (@HoustonRockets) January 19, 2026
That exchange, Durant climbing, Dirk applauding, is what gives these leaderboard jumps their emotional weight. Nowitzki’s 31,560 were never just points; they were the outline of a career that changed how a seven-footer could score, how a franchise could be carried for two decades, and how skill could become identity. Durant passing him isn’t an erasure of that legacy. It’s a continuation of the same idea, expressed from a different body type and a different era: shot-making as craft, repetition as greatness.
Durant has talked for years about admiring Nowitzki, and the historical symmetry is hard to miss. Nowitzki was the prototype of the modern scoring big who could pull centers away from the rim and still punish them in the post. Durant became the perimeter version of that same dilemma, too tall for wings, too quick for bigs, able to score from anywhere without needing the offense to “set” first. Their methods differ, but the effect is similar: defenses don’t really solve them; they negotiate with them.
The all-time list is ruthless about what it records and what it forgets. It remembers the numbers, not the textures. But nights like this carry both. The number, 31,562, is the official marker. The texture is Dirk’s message arriving right on time, like the league itself acknowledging that this climb is not just arithmetic. It’s lineage.
Durant’s next landmark is already visible. Ahead of him at fifth sits Michael Jordan at 32,292, a gap that turns the rest of the season into a slow, inevitable chase. But in Houston on Sunday night, the chase paused long enough for the moment to land: one legend stepping aside without bitterness, another stepping forward without celebration, and a win that made the milestone feel earned rather than staged.
That’s how the scoring list is supposed to move; quietly, competitively, and with respect.
