On Wednesday night in Houston, James Harden and the Rockets knocked off DeMarcus Cousins’ Sacramento Kings 115-111. Harden put up a career-high 51 points, surpassing the previous personal-best of 50 he set just two weeks earlier. No Rocket had ever scored 50 twice in one season before, not even the great Hakeem Olajuwon.
Harden shot 16-for-25 from the floor, a spectacular 8-of-9 from three-point land and 11-for-13 at the foul line. He also posted eight rebounds, six assists and three steals in 38 minutes of action.
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Somehow, despite all of those monstrous numbers, Harden’s stat line was not the most impressive one of the game–not even close.
Cousins shot an uninspiring 11-for-25 from the field and 2-for-6 at the free-throw line, totaling 24 points in 39 minutes. There’s nothing in particular that stands out there, until you fill in the rest of his box score: 21 rebounds, 10 assists, six blocks and three steals.
In addition, Cousins turned the ball over five times, committed four fouls and grabbed 15 of his boards on the defensive side of the floor. Why is all that relevant?
"Cousins was literally a one-man leadership team. He led the team or was tied for the team lead in 13 different box score stats — points, rebounds, assists, steals, blocks, turnovers, fouls, minutes, defensive rebounds, field goals, free throws, field goal attempts and free throw attempts."
The only standard box score categories Cousins didn’t lead the Kings in were three-pointers (he did not make or attempt one) and offensive rebounds, where Jason Thompson out-dueled him 7-6.
Also noted in the article, it was the first game in NBA history where one player scored 50 or more points and an opponent had a triple-double featuring a 20-20.
The last NBA player to post a triple-double with at least 24 points and 21 rebounds was also a King, Chris Webber in 1999. Other than Webber and Cousins, Charles Barkley is the only other player in the Basketball-Reference database (which goes back to 1985) to accomplish such a feat.
When Cousins’ six blocks are added into the equation, the search comes up empty for another game equaling his output.
The Elias Sports Bureau was able to dig a little deeper, determining that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar is the last player to manage a 20-point, 20-rebound, 10-assist, five-block game since the league starting tracking blocks in 1973:
Per Elias, @boogiecousins joined Kareem as only players to have 20+pts, 20+reb,10+ast, 5+blk in a game (since blks became official, ’73-74)
— NBA.com/Stats (@nbastats) April 2, 2015
However, there is a bit of a discrepancy here. According to Basketball-Reference, Webber pulled it off on Nov. 23, 1999. NBA.com’s box score only credits him with four blocks in that game though.
Regardless, it’s still an extremely rare accomplishment for Cousins. The irony is, his huge statistical night wasn’t enough to earn his club a victory. In fact, that’s actually been the norm for Cousins and the Kings this year. Wednesday marked Cousins’ third 20-20 game of 2014-15, and Sacramento is now 0-3 in those contests.
Oddly enough, a similar trend is also true league-wide. In total there have been 16 20-20 games in the NBA this season. The players who accomplished it were on the winning side on just six of those 16 occasions.
Next: DeAndre Jordan: 2nd-best FG% ever, 2nd-worst FT% ever
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