Kevin Durant's 5-word response to latest scoring feat
Yesterday at 12:38 PM
In the Phoenix Suns home opener on Saturday night, Kevin Durant treated fans in the desert to a show, scoring team-high 31 points and adding 9 rebounds in a 114-102 win over the defending Western Conference champion Dallas Mavericks. For Durant, it was the 388th career regular season game in which one of the game’s greatest scorers has finished a game with at least 30 points.
Kevin Durant is one of eight only active players — along with LeBron James, James Harden, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, DeMar DeRozan, Chris Paul and Damian Lillard — with over 20,000 career points, per Basketball-Reference. But on Saturday night, Durant made history as he became just the 8th player in NBA history to reach the 29,000 point mark, joining LeBron, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Karl Malone, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan, Dirk Nowitzki and Wilt Chamberlain in this exclusive club.
Don’t expect KD to rest on his laurels, though. The 36-year-old believes he’s nowhere close to finished.
"I got more to do."
Kevin Durant after finding out he surpassed 29k career points
(via @NBA)
— ClutchPoints (@ClutchPoints) October 27, 2024
Assuming Durant plays in roughly half of the Suns’ remaining regular season games this year, he’ll reach the 30,000 point mark sometime during the 2024-25 season. But unfortunately, given Durant’s recent history, penciling him in for that many games shouldn’t be viewed as a guarantee.
Availability is only sign that Kevin Durant is slowing down
Since suffering an Achilles tear in the 2019 NBA Finals, Kevin Durant has missed more games than he’s played, including the entire 2019-20 season. However, last year, KD played in 75 games, which was his highest total since the 2018-19 season, but in that five season span leading up to the 2024-25 season, Durant played in just 209 total regular season games.
In those 209 games, Kevin Durant hasn’t shown any sort of drop-off. Since the 2020-21 season, KD is averaging 28.2 points, 6.9 rebounds, and 5.4 assists with 53/41/89 shooting splits. In 849 games prior to that, Durant’s averages were 27.0 points, 7.1 rebounds, and 4.1 assists with 49/38/88 shooting splits.
The post Kevin Durant’s 5-word response to latest scoring feat appeared first on ClutchPoints.
