During the game against the Boston Celtics, Kevin Durant reached a huge career milestone. He became the NBA’s 23rd player to reach 25,000 career points.
While he was pleased with his accomplishment, he admitted that he should have done it sooner. Durant has been injured frequently throughout his career, and there is little doubt that if he hadn’t missed so much time, he would have reached the 25K milestone sooner.
In the postgame interview, he was asked about the milestone and replied:
“It’s pretty cool. I should be at 30 right now but it’s cool to reach that milestone and be amongst the greats. I’ve just got to keep pushing and keep going and see where I end up.”
Kevin Durant entered the game 33 points under the mark and ended up scoring 37 points on the night. He now has a total of 25,004 points throughout his career.
Durant would be much closer to 30,000 points as he himself pointed out if it hadn’t been for a torn right Achilles in Game 5 of the 2019 NBA Finals, which sidelined him the whole 2019-20 season.
Add to that a slew of other injuries in recent years, including a sprained left MCL that cost him a month and a half this season. In his career, Kevin Durant has missed a total of 256 games.
Despite the setbacks, except for the 2014-15 and 2020-21 seasons, he has never scored less than 1,500 points in a season. He’s led the league in scoring four times and averaged more than 30 points per game twice.
Durant now joins LeBron James and Carmelo Anthony of the Los Angeles Lakers as the only active players with 25,000 points.
Durant also became the seventh-fastest member to hit the 25k mark – hitting the mark in his 922nd game.
That puts him behind six legends of the sport: Wilt Chamberlain (691), Michael Jordan (782), Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (889), LeBron James (915), Oscar Robertson (917), and Jerry West (920).
Nets coach Steve Nash was full of praises after the match.
He said, “Kevin’s incredible.”
“I could sit here for an hour talking about Kevin Durant. And the ability, the sacrifices, the resilience, the passion for the game.
“That’s what you see out there; obviously someone that has gifts, but someone who has worked to master and refine those gifts endlessly. And he’s come back from some big injuries and continued to play at an equally high level every single time.
“He’s well into his 30s here — that’s an impressive, impressive résumé and it’s because of all the work on top of the gifts he has.”
