James Harden: How Houston Rockets star's streak is shattering both records and perceptions

Mike D’Antoni has seen a lot in close to two decades as an NBA head coach but for weeks now, he has been running out of words to describe his main man for the Houston Rockets, James Harden. After Sunday’s comeback win over the Orlando Magic, D’Antoni was even changing his star point guard’s position in his quest to find the right terms in which to frame Harden’s brilliance.

“I just told James they voted him in the wrong place,” D’Antoni laughed to journalists. “They got him down as a guard in the All-Star. He should be a centre. That’s what he is. He’s a point-centre and his defence... is really good.” Almost since the dawn of social media Harden’s often lackadaisical defending has been the subject of countless GIFs, but the only real Twitter focus on it this season was his brilliant, no-look steal from DeMar DeRozan as he was poised to dunk home for the San Antonio Spurs – a stylish move all the more delicious for those aware of his past defensive caprices.

While Harden being locked in on the defensive end is very welcome – especially for a Rockets team which lost two of its best defenders, Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Mouté, last summer – this latest gold star from D’Antoni was more an indication that his cupboard is bare of further superlatives. The reigning MVP has taken his game up a notch further this season, single-handedly dragging the Rockets back into the playoff picture after a poor start.

With his fellow All-Star and guard Chris Paul laid up for 17 games with a hamstring injury, Harden clicked into overdrive. The 29-year-old has always shouldered a heavy ball-handling and scoring burden since arriving in Texas in 2012, but with his main partner-in-crime on the sidelines, he has taken it to another level. The Rockets won 12 of the games that Paul missed (with towering centre Clint Capela, the recipient of so many of Harden’s killer passes, still missing after surgery on his thumb), almost exclusively because of Harden’s superhuman efforts.

Harden leads the NBA in point scoring, averaging a colossal 36.3 per game – the next best Golden State Warriors’ Steph Curry, with 29.6, and New Orleans Pelicans’ wantaway talisman Anthony Davis, with 29.3 – but that doesn’t tell half the story. His 37 in Tuesday’s surprise loss to the Pelicans took his run of successive 30-point-plus games to 24, which has only ever been bettered by the legendary Wilt Chamberlain (who did so on three occasions). He has reached at least 40 in 14 of those and has hit 50 four times, including last week’s 61 against the Knicks in New York, with their famous arena renamed ‘Madison Square Harden’ for the evening by Rockets fans.

On posting 40 on Sunday, he became the first player since Michael Jordan (in 1986-87) to log at least 18 40-point games within the first 46 games of a season. While on this run, Harden has managed to continue teeing up his teammates at the rate of 8.2 assists per game.

Rubbing statistical shoulders with Chamberlain, MJ and Kobe Bryant, despite a colossal workload in Paul’s absence, has meant that even the cynics have been forced to doff their caps. Harden has always split opinion, as perhaps befits a player who is a walking heap of contradictions. He is ”…flamboyant but camouflaged, slow but fast, awkward but agile, offbeat but mainstream,” as the 2016 ESPN documentary Behind The Beard put it.

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Many Harden naysayers are turned off by his relative lack of athletic prowess. It’s a barb that has dogged him since high school, when he suffered badly with asthma. Others are infuriated by his propensity to draw fouls around the basket. Harden has won 557 free throws this season, with Sixers big man Joel Embiid next up on 468. Many would call him a flopper, though he has described himself as “crafty” to make up for the elite athleticism abundantly clear in his former Oklahoma City Thunder teammate Russell Westbrook, for example.

Harden finally won the MVP title for his efforts last season. Many thought he should have got it the year before, when he was edged out by Westbrook and his feat of averaging a triple-double for the season. This season he is contending for the award with Giannis Antetekounmpo on the back of the Milwaukee Bucks’ surge up the LeBron-less Eastern Conference.

Being the underdog suits Harden, though. He was always the bridesmaid in OKC, the perennial (and very successful) sixth man supporting Westbrook and Kevin Durant before Thunder general manager Sam Presti traded him when he hesitated over a potential contract extension.

With the weight of the franchise heaped on him with the Rockets in an early season crisis of form – with the Carmelo Anthony signing backfiring badly – giving way to a slew of injuries, Harden has responded magnificently. In fact, that out-of-shape, asthmatic kid from Compton has turned into an exemplary leader, as well as an all-time great scorer.