Kevin Durant has 29,974 points in his career going into Wednesday’s game, just 26 points short of the 30,000-point milestone. Few milestones are more elusive than what he can accomplish on Wednesday when the Suns go to the Thunder (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN).
He may join this special club at the city where he spent eight seasons of his 17-year career, and he will become the eighth member once he reaches the 30,000-point mark.
Only seven players in the NBA’s nearly eight decades have scored 30,000 points in their careers:
Wilt Chamberlain, Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dirk Nowitzki, LeBron James, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, and Karl Malone. The others, with the exception of James, who is still playing, are inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame.
Durant, who entered the NBA as the second overall pick in the 2007 Draft, has been a prolific scorer, amassing points from all over the court and taking home four scoring titles. After Jordan (10) and Chamberlain (seven), that comes in third.
White space is conspicuously lacking in Durant’s shot chart, which displays his 10,331 career buckets as of Wednesday night.
Great scorers frequently use the expression “getting to my spots.” The whole court is “his spot” for Durant.
Due to his exceptional agility, guard-like talents, and center-like height (6’11” with a 7’5″ wingspan), Durant stands out among NBA scorers.
Bigs have extended their range to the perimeter in the so-called unicorn era, but they still can’t score at all three levels as easily as Durant does. His Instagram username, “@EasyMoneySniper,” appropriately captures his skill set—he is a deadly scorer who does so with ease and fluidity.
Observe the uniform distribution of Durant’s 29,974 career points. Given how frequently 3-point specialists use corner 3-pointers, it makes sense that this zone is the only one that is underrepresented. Durant is merely a scorer and is by no means a specialist.
With a scoring average of 27.2 points per game, Durant is fourth among players who have played in at least 500 games in their career, behind only Jordan (30.1), Chamberlain (30.1), and Elgin Baylor (27.4).
Due to his steady scoring, Durant is on track to surpass half of the current team in games played and reach 30,000 points sooner. He will become the third-fastest player to reach 30,000 points, joining Abdul-Jabbar, if he can score the 26 points he needs on Wednesday.
Durant will try to eclipse the all-time top scorers after he surpasses the 30,000-point mark, with Chamberlain (31,419) in seventh position and Nowitzki (31,560) in sixth.
Durant hasn’t shown any symptoms of slowing down, but they won’t come this season. At 26.9 points per game, he is only 0.3 points below his career average. Both might occur in 2025–2026 if Durant continues at that pace, which would require 54 games to pass Chamberlain and 59 to pass Nowitzki.
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