When it comes time to vote for the NBA MVP, James Harden is a perennial contender. He won the award in 2017-18 and has finished second three times since 2014-15, including last season, when he posted the highest scoring average since Michael Jordan in 1987-88. And after a sluggish start, the Houston Rockets are in the thick of things in the West at 11-5.
Well, so far in 2019-20, Harden has ascended to the Wilt Chamberlain plane. He leads the NBA with 38.3 points per game, a figure that would be the fourth-highest in NBA history, less than a point behind Chamberlain’s 1960-61 output (38.4), with only the ridiculous 44.8 and 50.4 Chamberlain put up in 1962-63 and 1961-62, respectively, above that.
If scoring was the only thing Harden did, it would be impressive. But he’s also averaging 7.8 assists, 5.9 rebounds and 1.7 steals in 37.1 minutes per game. He’s shaken off an early season slump and is shooting 43.4 percent overall, 35.2 percent on an astonishing (and NBA-record pace) 13.7 3-pointers per game and is making 86.6 percent of his whopping 14.4 free throws per night.
His game may not be aesthetically pleasing to all — free throw shooting is not an exciting event in and of itself, after all — but in a game where the idea is to put orange ball through orange hoop as many times as possible, Harden is an absolute savant. And hey, the whole “co-exist with Russell Westbrook” thing seems not to have become an issue to this point, either.