DALLAS _ It's been a 21-season ascent, a climb that has been more arduous in recent seasons, especially this one.
By those parameters, Monday night's historic moment materialized quickly and easily.
The goose-bump effect, though, was no less palpable when, just 3:25 into Monday night's Mavericks-Pelicans game, Dirk Nowitzki sank a 20-foot fadeaway from just inside the top of the key, catapulting himself past Wilt Chamberlain and becoming the No. 6 scorer in NBA history.
The basket gave 40-year-old Mavericks icon Nowitzki 31,420 points, surpassing Chamberlain's 31,419, staggering numbers that befit a monumental achievement.
At last, The Big German eclipsed The Big Dipper.
American Airlines Center fans stood throughout the nine possessions that it took for Nowitzki to score the four points he needed to pass Chamberlain, with many of the fans recording the history-making basket while engulfing Nowitzki with cheers.
Nowitzki began this season just 232 points behind Chamberlain, who at the time was the No. 5 scorer in history. But while Nowitzki missed the season's first 26 games while rehabbing from ankle surgery, both Nowitzki and Chamberlain were passed by the Lakers' LeBron James early this season.
The 7-foot-1, 275-pound Chamberlain, who died in 1999, is a mythic figure in NBA history, arguably the greatest to play the game and certainly the most dominant player of his era.
Growing up in Northern New York, near the Canadian border, Mavericks coach Rick Carlisle gained his love of the NBA mostly through magazines and by driving 10 minutes to a friend's house to watch the NBA game of the week on Saturday nights on ABC.
"He was the guy that I was just simply in awe of," Carlisle said of Chamberlain. "Wilt was just one of those larger-than-life guys that did virtually everything there was to do on a basketball court."
Chamberlain's accomplishments are too numerous to boil into a few-paragraph bio, but the legendary ones include scoring 100 points in one game, averaging 50.4 points in his third season and leading the NBA in assists (8.6 per game) in the 1967-68 season.
Though his teams usually were overshadowed during the Celtics dynasty, Chamberlain played on two of the most dominant NBA title teams off all time, the 1966-67 Philadelphia Warriors and 1971-72 Lakers.
Chamberlain was 36 years, 219 days old when he scored his final NBA regular-season point on March 28, 1973 at Golden State. That was his lone point that night.
Unfathomably, Chamberlain's name has fallen from most recent-year conversations about the greatest basketball player of all time, arguments that lately have centered around Michael Jordan and James.
But for anyone who has closely followed the sport since the 1960s, "Chamberlain" remains a fabled name in the sport's history.
Nowitzki's climb up the top-10 scoring ladder -- passing Oscar Robertson, Hakeem Olajuwon, Elvin Hayes, Moses Malone and Shaquille O'Neal -- was like perusing a museum of basketball legends, but passing Chamberlain is awe-inspiring. A breath-taker.
Despite his on-court struggles, Nowitzki has been feted in arenas across the NBA, even though he has yet to definitely say whether this NBA record-tying 21st season will be his last.
"It's been special," Nowitzki said. "It's just something I'll always remember the rest of my life, the receptions and the respect for what I did over the last two decades. It's been emotional at times and something I'll never forget."
