Houston Rockets: 3 reasons James Harden is the MVP frontrunner

3. Injuries to his teammates

At one point or another, every NBA team is going to be affected by injuries. It’s simply the nature of the game. Aside from the Los Angeles Lakers, it’s not hyperbolic to suggest that no other team outside of Houston was more greatly affected by injuries to some of its most impactful players.

CP3, Harden’s backcourt mate, has missed 24 games with a number of injuries. Capela missed 15 after thumb surgery. Eric Gordon sprinkled in 14 DNPs throughout the season. Most teams would crumble with the absence of its core. The Rockets, however, haven’t played like most teams this season.

They were 14-10 without Paul, 9-6 without Capela and 9-5 without Gordon. Some of those games overlapped, but there’s a reason Houston didn’t completely nosedive in any of these games, and his name is James Harden.

He didn’t always have guys to carry some of the load offensively. Defenses were geared to stop only him on a nightly basis and force anyone else to beat them. Harden had all the excuses in the world, and yet every game was spent making sure he was doing everything possible so that his team came out on top more often than not — no matter who may have been playing alongside him on a given night.