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Kevin Durant passes Shaquille O’Neal for No. 8 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list

Phoenix Suns superstar Kevin Durant has passed Shaquille O’Neal for No. 8 on the NBA’s all-time scoring list with a jumper in the third quarter against the 76ers.

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Durant entered tonight needing nine points (this jumper was 10) to pass O’Neal. He now has 28,598 career points in 1,048 games played. This is 159 less games than O’Neal played in his career.

Shaq sent Durant a congratulatory message to Durant that played on the Jumbotron.

“Well deserved,” O’Neal said. “It doesn’t stop here… If anybody was gonna pass me, it was definitely gonna be you.”

“I am just grateful to be in a category with so many greats,” Durant, who finished with 22 points, said postgame. “We all know what Shaq meant to the game of basketball, so to be up there with him is a major, major honor in my opinion. One of the all-time greats in sports history so, I know the game is much more than scoring. About winning championships and other things but it is cool to be up there with those names.”

This is the second time since the All-Star break Durant has moved up on the scoring list, as he passed Carmelo Anthony for ninth all-time on Feb. 23.

“We’re lucky to have him,” Sunss’ coach Frank Vogel said of Durant. “He is one of the greatest scorers to ever play this game and one of the greatest players to play this game and what he is doing for our group is…obviously, the totality of his career, you can see the numbers about passing somebody like Shaq, but what he is doing for this year’s team is far greater than just scoring a basketball. He’s been one of our best defenders and I don’t know where we would be without him, what he is doing playing a complete game in particular on the defensive side.”

Grayson Allen, who tied a season high with 32 points tonight, has seen Durant firsthand move up on the scoring list several times this season.

“It is really cool,” Allen said. “Every five games it seems like he is passing another legend, or another Hall of Famer. So, it is just awesome to be out there and try not to take these moments for granted while playing with such a great player like that. It is really cool. I went to (Durant’s) camp when I was in high school. I saw a picture a few weeks ago from his skills academy, so it is kind of funny now. It was 2014, so 10 years later being his teammate is pretty cool.”

Now, he might need to wait another season or two to jump to No. 7, as the late, great Wilt Chamberlain currently sits in seventh place with 2,821 more points than Durant.

Durant is averaging the fourth-most points in the NBA this season at 27.8 per game. If he averaged this number until then, it would take him 100 games to reach Chamberlain.

Kevin Durant passes Carmelo Anthony for 9th place on NBA’s all-time scoring list

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Brendan Mau is a senior writer covering the Phoenix Suns and more for Burn City Sports. You can follow him on X via @Brendan_Mau

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