PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant passed Wilt Chamberlain for seventh on the NBA’s career scoring list Friday night when he made a 3-pointer for the Houston Rockets in the third quarter of their 111-105 loss to the Portland Trail Blazers.<\/p>\n
Durant needed 15 points going into the game to eclipse Chamberlain, who scored 31,419. Durant’s jumper with 7:57 left in the third gave him 31,422. <\/p>\n
Dirk Nowitzki is sixth on the career list with 31,560 points. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo be amongst the greats is always an honor,\u201d Durant said after the game. \u201cWilt is somebody I studied and tried to look up to as much as I can, a player like that. Like I always say, he set a standard for NBA players and (I’m) grateful to reach that \u2014 and inspired by what he produced for the game of basketball.\u201d<\/p>\n
Durant, 37, is in his 18th NBA season and is a 15-time All-Star. He finished Friday’s game with 30 points and 12 rebounds, also surpassing 8,000 career rebounds. <\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it doesn’t amaze me when you see the work ethic and what he does on a day-to-day basis,” Rockets coach Ime Udoka said before Friday night’s game about Durant’s impending milestone.<\/p>\n
Blazers coach Tiago Splitter said he remembered being impressed by Durant when he was a young player with Oklahoma City. <\/p>\n
\u201cJust a young Kevin Durant, scoring 30 every night, and he just keeps doing that, which is amazing,” Splitter said. “At his age, of course, he’s probably at the end of his career, but just doing that every night is just impressive.\u201d<\/p>\n
When the scoring achievement was announced to fans at the Moda Center during the game, Durant was rewarded with warm applause and a hug from Splitter. <\/p>\n
\u201cThese milestones always have me reflecting on the people that helped me get to this point \u2014 the journey that I’ve been through, the close calls and the things that could have went left plenty of times in my life,\u201d Durant said. \u201cSo to be here, very, very grateful, and Portland is such a classy, classy city for recognizing me in that moment and honoring me.” <\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP NBA: https:\/\/www.apnews.com\/NBA<\/p>\n
Anne M. Peterson, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) \u2014 Kevin Durant passed Wilt Chamberlain for seventh on the NBA’s career scoring list Friday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400242,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[49,48,459,82],"class_list":["post-400241","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nba","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400241","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400241"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400241\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400242"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400241"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400241"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400241"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}