Golden State Warriors forward Kevin Durant has quietly reached elite company by tying Kareem Abdul-Jabbar with his 71st 20-plus-point game in a row, good for fifth all-time in NBA history.

While Stephen Curry stole the headlines with a bombastic 46 points and a new NBA record 13 threes made in a single game, Durant has put himself alongside basketball royalty with his scoring consistency.

This is the same record streak which great scorers like Karl Malone, Allen Iverson and Kobe Bryant went out to get at one point in their career, but fell short of the summit.

Bryant said shortly before retiring last season that Durant's streak (then sitting at 64 games) should never end.

“He's such a fantastic player, man. He has no flaws in his game,” Bryant told Royce Young of ESPN. “When he first came in the league he eliminated the weaknesses that he had, the pull-up going right and the pull-up going left, he's eliminated all of that stuff.”

“There's literally nothing he can't do offensively. I don't see that streak stopping any time soon.”

Funnily enough, Bryant said these words late in April after the Los Angeles Lakers lost to the Oklahoma City Thunder, where the 6-foot-9 forward surpassed his career-best streak of 63 games in a row with 20-plus-points in a game.

Durant can tie Michael Jordan for fourth-highest next game against the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday — but the challenge doesn't stop there.

While the record books are a bit cloudy in the 60s, tracking from 1963-and-on, the top three in the pantheon of mythological 20-plus-points-a-game scorers goes like this:

  1. Wilt Chamberlain — 80
  2. Oscar Robertson — 79
  3. Connie Hawkins — 76

While Durant is close and is indeed in the realm of joining this elite company, it won't be as effortless as it once was, given that the Warriors system is predicated on sharing and finding the open man — a system which he has seemed to fully buy into since the start of the season.

Kevin Durant finished Monday night's game with 22 points and five assists in a 116-106 victory against the New Orleans Pelicans.