Stephen Curry Passes Oscar Robertson for 17th on NBA All-Time Scoring List as Warriors Beat Heat 120-100 for Sixth Straight Win

Curry Passes Robertson as Warriors Roll On

Stephen Curry scored 29 points and passed Oscar Robertson for 17th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list on Thursday night, as the Golden State Warriors beat the Miami Heat 120-100 at Chase Center in San Francisco for their sixth consecutive victory.

According to the Associated Press, the milestone arrived early, with a three-pointer at the 7:03 mark of the opening quarter lifting Curry’s career total to 26,711 points and moving him past Robertson’s long-standing mark of 26,710. It was Curry’s second climb up the all-time list inside a week, and it came on a night when the Warriors again looked like a team transformed from the one that opened the season with three straight defeats.

Golden State, which started the season 0-3, improved to 6-3 with the win, according to Sportradar, while Miami fell to 3-6 on the second night of a back-to-back. The Heat had needed overtime to beat the Los Angeles Clippers 117-116 on Wednesday night, and the fatigue showed in the second half, when the Warriors outscored them 67-47 and led by as many as 20 points.

Curry finished 9 of 19 from the field, 6 of 12 from three-point range and a perfect 5 of 5 from the free-throw line in just under 28 minutes, according to Sportradar, adding one rebound, four assists and a steal. He scored 22 of his 29 points after half-time, shooting 7 of 9 from the field and 5 of 7 from beyond the arc in the second half, according to Reuters.

“This run that we are on is building a lot of confidence,” Curry said after the game, according to ESPN’s Anthony Slater, as reported by ClutchPoints. The remark captured the mood of a Warriors side that has not lost since falling to the Phoenix Suns on 24 October.

A Slow Start, Then a Second-Half Surge

For much of the first half, there was little sign of the explosion to come. Curry began the game 1 of 8 from the field and was 2 of 10 at half-time, according to the Associated Press, and he had made only one of his five three-point attempts before the break, according to Reuters. The teams went into the interval tied at 53-53, and Miami even led 61-58 early in the third quarter on a Klay Thompson jumper just over two minutes after the restart.

From there, Golden State took control with devastating speed. The Warriors opened with an 18-3 run that featured 11 points from Curry, including two three-pointers and three free throws after he was fouled on a 25-foot attempt, according to Reuters. The Associated Press reported that Miami was outscored 26-9 during one crucial stretch of the third quarter and never recovered, while ClutchPoints noted that Golden State won the third quarter 38-23.

Miami never got closer than 10 points after the Warriors’ run, according to Reuters, and Curry sat out the closing stages once the game was out of hand. That rest cost him a fourth consecutive game with 30 or more points, according to the Associated Press, but by then the milestone and the result were both secure.

The supporting cast played a large part in the win. Yaxel Lendeborg scored 17 points with eight rebounds, six assists and three steals, according to Reuters, continuing an impressive start to his rookie season. Draymond Green recorded a season-high 11 assists and drove the defensive effort that held Giannis Antetokounmpo to four points after half-time, while Georges Niang scored 13 points off the bench, according to the Associated Press.

The depth of the Warriors’ bench was one of the clearest differences between the sides. According to Reuters, Will Richard and Brandon Williams scored 10 points apiece, Gary Payton II added nine, Al Horford and Charles Bassey contributed eight each, and the reserves combined for 53 points. Bassey also grabbed seven rebounds and blocked three shots in just 14 minutes.

Miami’s Stars Faded After Half-Time

For Miami, Davion Mitchell led the way with a team-high 22 points and eight assists, hitting four three-pointers, according to Reuters. Antetokounmpo finished with 20 points and a game-high 14 rebounds, and Bam Adebayo recorded a double-double with 18 points and 10 rebounds, according to the Associated Press.

Yet the numbers hide how sharply Miami faded. Antetokounmpo had 16 points and 10 rebounds in the first half, making six of his nine shots, according to Reuters, but he managed only four points after the break on one-of-four shooting as Green’s defence took hold. The Heat, who had been seeking a fourth win in five games after an 0-4 start, showed no signs of fatigue over the first 26 minutes, according to Reuters, but the second night of a back-to-back eventually caught up with them.

There was a warm reception for a returning favourite before tip-off. Klay Thompson, Curry’s former Splash Brother, scored 11 points in his return to Chase Center and received a warm ovation before the game, according to the Associated Press. A night earlier, Thompson had hit the winning three-pointer with a second left in overtime of the Heat’s 117-116 victory over the Clippers. On Thursday he finished 3 of 10 from the floor, including 2 of 7 from three-point range, according to Reuters.

Andrew Wiggins also faced his old Golden State team-mates and scored just two points on 1-of-6 shooting, to go with six rebounds and four assists, according to the Associated Press, on Miami’s third stop of a five-game West Coast road trip. Pelle Larsson and Ryan Conwell each added 13 points for the Heat, according to Reuters.

Miami head coach Erik Spoelstra had made defending the three-point line a priority before the game, calling it “high on the priority list”, according to the Associated Press. The plan did not hold: the Warriors finished 16 of 41 from long range, shooting 39 per cent as a team.

The Milestone: 26,711 and Counting

The scoring milestone itself was almost quiet in its arrival. Curry needed only two points to pass Robertson when the game began, and the three-pointer that did it came less than five minutes into the contest, with 7:03 remaining in the first quarter. The basket took him to 26,711 career regular-season points, one more than Robertson’s 26,710, and into 17th place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list.

According to reports, Curry is now the second-highest scoring point guard in NBA history, trailing only Russell Westbrook, who has 27,176 career points, according to the NBA’s career scoring list on Wikipedia. Robertson himself was a point guard, which makes the pass a symbolic one: Curry has now outscored the man who defined the position for a generation.

The climb has been rapid. Just six days earlier, on 30 October, Curry moved into 18th place by passing Dominique Wilkins, who finished his career with 26,668 points, according to reports. Curry scored 31 points that night as the Warriors erased a 25-point deficit to beat the Los Angeles Lakers 112-95 in an NBA Cup game, a 17-point win that was reported as the largest margin of victory in the shot-clock era for a team trailing by 20 or more points at the end of the first quarter.

Curry’s scoring form this season has been remarkable for a 38-year-old in his 18th NBA season. According to reports from early in the season, he had scored 180 points through his first six games, an average of 30.0 per game, including 34 points in Monday’s 116-113 win over the Phoenix Suns. He also holds 15 career 40-point games at age 35 or older, tied with LeBron James and ahead of Michael Jordan’s 12, according to the Warriors’ own game notes reported this week.

The road ahead is crowded with famous names. DeMar DeRozan sits 16th on the list with 26,775 points, according to reports this week, only 64 ahead of Curry, and the two are expected to chase each other up the standings for much of the season. Beyond him lies Hakeem Olajuwon in 15th with 26,946 points, then Westbrook in 14th with 27,176, according to the NBA career scoring list. Elvin Hayes (27,313) and Moses Malone (27,409) sit further up the same list. Back in January 2026, NBA.com wrote that if Curry stayed healthy, he could climb as high as No. 12 by the end of the season, according to reports.

Who Was Oscar Robertson?

To understand why passing Robertson matters, it helps to know what the “Big O” represented. Robertson played for the Cincinnati Royals and the Milwaukee Bucks between 1960 and 1974, and he was the first player in NBA history to average a triple-double over an entire season, doing so in 1961-62 with 30.8 points, 12.5 rebounds and 11.4 assists per game. That feat stood alone for more than half a century until Russell Westbrook matched it in 2016-17.

Robertson won his only NBA championship in 1971, alongside a young Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, when the Bucks swept the Baltimore Bullets in the Finals. He was a 12-time All-Star, the league’s Most Valuable Player in 1964, and a Hall of Fame inductee whose influence extended well beyond the court: as president of the players’ association, he led the landmark antitrust case, Robertson v. NBA, which helped win free agency for players and reshaped the economics of American professional sport.

His career total of 26,710 points stood as a monument to consistency. Robertson averaged more than 25 points per game across 14 seasons, and he did it in an era before the three-point line existed, scoring almost all of his points from inside the arc or at the free-throw line. That Curry, the greatest three-point shooter the game has ever seen, should be the man to pass him is a neat piece of basketball history: the player who changed how the game is scored moving past the player who changed how it is played.

Curry’s Own Place in History

Curry’s own career needs little introduction, but the scale of it is worth setting out. Drafted seventh overall by Golden State in 2009, he has spent his entire career with the Warriors, winning four NBA championships in 2015, 2017, 2018 and 2022, and two Most Valuable Player awards, including the first unanimous MVP selection in league history in 2016. He was named Finals MVP in 2022, and he is the NBA’s all-time leader in three-pointers made, a record he now holds by a wide margin.

He added an Olympic gold medal with Team USA at the Paris Games in 2024, hitting a flurry of late three-pointers in the gold-medal game against France that instantly became part of his legend. He has been selected to the All-Star Game 11 times and has been named to the All-NBA first team on four occasions.

What makes the current scoring run so striking is the context of the Warriors’ season. Golden State opened the campaign with three straight defeats, including a 127-105 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on 21 October in which Curry scored 23 points and sat out the entire fourth quarter. The team was also without several rotation players through injury, and the early-season questions about whether a 38-year-old Curry could still carry a contender were being asked loudly.

Six straight wins have answered them, at least for now. The Warriors have beaten the Lakers, the Suns, the Clippers and now the Heat during the streak, and Curry has been the biggest reason for the turnaround, averaging 30 points a game over the early part of the season. The win over Miami was the cleanest of the run: a 20-point margin, a rested star in the fourth quarter, and a bench that outscored the opposition’s reserves by a wide margin.

There was also a quieter moment of remembrance on the night. Golden State honoured the late Jason Collins, the former NBA centre and the league’s first openly gay active player, on Pride Night, with his twin brother and former Warriors assistant coach Jarron Collins in attendance, according to the Associated Press. Collins died earlier this year, and the tribute was a reminder that the evening carried meaning beyond the box score.

Analysis: Why It Matters

A milestone that measures longevity, not just scoring

Passing Oscar Robertson is not really about one three-pointer on a Thursday night in November. It is about 18 seasons of availability, adaptation and relentless shooting, and it places Curry in a class of players whose careers are measured in decades rather than peaks. Robertson’s 26,710 points were accumulated in an era of fewer games, no three-point line and far more physical defence; Curry’s 26,711 have been accumulated in an era he himself helped to transform, in which the three-pointer went from a specialist’s weapon to the centre of every offence in the league.

There is a temptation to treat all-time lists as mere trivia, but they are the closest thing basketball has to a permanent record, and they reward the rarest quality in professional sport: staying great for a very long time. Curry has now passed Wilkins and Robertson in the space of a week, and every name ahead of him on the list is a Hall of Famer. He has done it while missing significant time to injury, including a 2019-20 season in which he played only five games, which makes the pace of his climb all the more remarkable.

The Warriors’ turnaround is real, and Curry is driving it

The six-game winning streak matters more than the milestone, at least for Golden State’s season. A 0-3 start, with a heavy defeat to the Lakers on opening night, raised genuine questions about whether this group could still compete at the top of the Western Conference. Six straight wins, including victories over the Lakers, the Suns and now the Heat, have answered those questions in the most convincing way possible: by winning, repeatedly, and by increasingly comfortable margins.

The Miami game was the most complete performance of the streak. The Warriors trailed at half-time and early in the third quarter, absorbed the Heat’s best punch, and then won the second half by 20 points. Curry rested in the fourth quarter, the bench contributed 53 points, and the defence held one of the league’s most physically dominant players to four points after half-time. That is the profile of a team that is winning with structure, not just with one man’s shooting.

Curry at 38 is still the system

There is a detail in the Miami game that deserves more attention than it has received: Curry scored 22 of his 29 points in the second half, on 7-of-9 shooting, after starting 2 of 10. At 38, in his 18th season, he remains the player who can bend an entire game in a single quarter. The 18-3 run that decided the contest featured 11 of his points, and it came after the Heat had taken the lead. That is not a player managing his decline; it is a player still deciding games.

The broader numbers support the same conclusion. Averaging 30 points a game through the early weeks of a season, with 15 career 40-point games at age 35 or older, Curry is producing at a level that only LeBron James has matched at a comparable age. The Warriors’ offence still runs through his movement off the ball, his gravity as a shooter opens space for team-mates like Lendeborg and Green, and the team’s winning streak has coincided exactly with his return to full scoring form.

What the record chase means for the rest of the season

The scoring list now gives the Warriors’ season a second storyline, and it is one that will follow Curry game by game. DeRozan sits only 64 points ahead in 16th place, Olajuwon 235 points ahead in 15th, and Westbrook 465 ahead in 14th. At his current scoring rate, Curry could pass all three before the end of the calendar year, and the January projection that he might reach 12th by season’s end no longer looks fanciful.

That chase is good for the Warriors in a practical sense, too. It gives every regular-season game a hook, it keeps Curry engaged through the long middle months of the season, and it provides a narrative that travels well beyond Golden State’s fanbase. The risk is that it becomes a distraction, but Curry has spent his entire career treating individual milestones as by-products of winning, and the six-game streak suggests he is doing so again.

The Heat’s problem is bigger than one night

Miami’s defeat should not be written off as a scheduling loss. The Heat were on the second night of a back-to-back, but they led at half-time and early in the third quarter, and they have genuine star power in Antetokounmpo, Mitchell and Adebayo. The concern is what happened after half-time: Antetokounmpo held to four points, the defence conceding 16 three-pointers, and a 20-point margin by the end.

The Heat are 3-6, they have lost six of their nine games, and they are in the middle of a five-game West Coast trip with a visit to Sacramento next. A team built around Antetokounmpo’s physical dominance cannot afford to have him neutralised so completely in second halves, and a coach who identified three-point defence as a priority cannot watch opponents shoot 39 per cent from deep. Miami’s early-season record is not yet a crisis, but the pattern of second-half fades is one that Spoelstra will need to solve quickly.

What to Watch Next

1. Curry vs DeRozan: Curry trails DeMar DeRozan by 64 points for 16th place on the all-time scoring list. At his current scoring rate, the pass could come within three or four games, and the two players are expected to trade places several times as the season goes on.
2. Olajuwon and Westbrook: Hakeem Olajuwon (26,946) and Russell Westbrook (27,176) are the next names above DeRozan. Passing Westbrook would also make Curry the highest-scoring point guard in NBA history.
3. Warriors vs Magic: Golden State hosts the Orlando Magic on Saturday night at Chase Center, looking for a seventh straight win to close a perfect homestand before facing the New Orleans Pelicans on Monday.
4. Heat in Sacramento: Miami visits the Sacramento Kings on Sunday as its five-game West Coast trip continues, needing a win to stop the early-season slide and to prove the second-half fade against Golden State was a one-off.
5. Curry’s scoring pace: Curry is averaging 30.0 points per game through the early season. If he sustains anything close to that rate, the January projection that he could reach 12th on the all-time list by season’s end will come firmly into view.

Sources

• Associated Press via theScore: Curry drops 29, Warriors beat Heat for 6th straight win
• Reuters: Stephen Curry (29), Warriors handle Heat for sixth straight win
• Associated Press via TSN: Curry scores 29 points as Warriors take down Heat to win sixth straight
• ClutchPoints: Stephen Curry makes confident declaration after huge 2nd half vs Heat
• Associated Press via Sportsnet: Stephen Curry scores 29 points as Warriors beat Heat for 6th straight win
• Wikipedia: List of NBA career scoring leaders