Dirk Nowitzki has moved ahead of Shaquille O'Neal into sixth place on the NBA's career scoring list.
Nowitzki made a jumper with 9:51 left in the second quarter of Dallas' game in Brooklyn on Wednesday night to pass O'Neal. Nowitzki finished with 22 points, making the go-ahead basket with 19.2 seconds left in overtime in Dallas' 119-118 victory, to push his total to 22,609.
Nowitzki will have plenty of time to think about what it means to pass O'Neal, a longtime rival who beat him in the 2006 NBA Finals. But on Wednesday, the most important thing was getting a win a night after a loss in Toronto, and ahead of a long flight back to Dallas.
"That's what I play for, is to compete at the highest level for this franchise, for this team," Nowitzki said. "Obviously No. 6 in the bigger picture is a lot bigger than this win in Brooklyn in December, but when you're out there you don't think about that. You want to get this win bad and fight out there against a talented team."
O'Neal had 28,596 in his career and is a candidate for induction into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in 2016.
Nowitzki is sure to get there someday, too, whenever he ends a career that saw him redefine the power forward position, and perhaps create the notion of a stretch-4 that teams now crave.
"You're talking about a guy who's a generational great player. (He) totally redefined the game, redefined a position," Mavs coach Rick Carlisle said.
Nowitzki is eighth on the combined NBA-ABA list, behinc No. 7 Moses Malone and No. 6 Julius Ervin.
