[Russo] James Harden has his 25th career 50-point game, which ties him with Kobe Bryant for third-most all-time.
please trade him to a competitive team
The sentiment around Harden has changed so much so fast. Love to see it.
Harden is love, Harden is peace, Harden bless
Harden been giving everything he has to teams that continue to quit on him for several years now. Hard not to root for the guy at this point.
He needs to stay there so OKC doesn’t get a top 5 pick. The man is saving basketball after attempting to destroy it.
At this rate one injury to harden and it’s all but a certainty okc gets that pick.
automatic 3rd place mvp finish if he can drag them to the playoffs just off the strength of keeping okc off the pick
Houston has a chance to do the funniest thing
no.. you dont mean? no… no!!
I am guessing wilt is 1st and jordan 2nd?
Wilt 118, Jordan 31, Kobe/Harden 25.
lol wilt
I genuinely wonder what it was like to witness the type of shit he was doing in person.
People probably thought it was easy.
Until he reached the playoffs
Everybody not lucky enough to be apart of a dynasty
He had great teams he just didn’t trust his teammates and cared about stats more than winning. The second he stopped the insane volume scoring and involved his teammates, he won a ring
Wilt played with 9 HOF teammates during his high scoring seasons, from 60-66. Sure, Russell’s teams were stacked with HOF players but most of those guys are in the Hall of Fame because Bill helped get them a heap of championships. What OP is probably referring to is Wilt’s discrepancy in regular season scoring and playoff scoring. He went from 30.1ppg to 22.5ppg. There was another big drop off to 18.5ppg in the Finals. Those are some huge falls. Compare that to MJ who went from 30.1 to 33.5 to 33.6ppg in those respective stages of the season. Probably also explains why MJ has more 50 point games than any player in playoff history. Any coach would much rather have a guy who steps up in the playoffs and Finals rather than someone who shrinks (I wanted to say ‘wilts’ but that would be too obvious a pun).
Still can’t believe these bozos nowadays can’t average 50.
yeah he averaged 50 …on 40fga + 17fta so… not that easy
“I mean he’s the tallest player of course he scores the most points” some guy in the 60s
I’ll stand by this, please understand it’s my opinion though.
I’ve watched a ton of up and coming eSports/traditional sports, and in the early years of most sports there tends to be a player or two which become outliers, and eventually shape the way the game is played, and the rules used to force the players to align with this style.
This was Wilt, he was one of the first truly dedicated and athletic 7 footers to ever play the game, and took full advantage of that. His teammates not making that much money from the game, and knowing his obvious advantage literally gave up wide open shots to give wilt the ball with 3 defenders on him, they also played without many many of the rules which were designed to stop nonsensical antics. If you guys think modern ref ball sucks… try your hardest and imagine the game before they learned all the little cheesy tricks that ruin the flow of the game we all love.
so you’re saying basketball terrorism has existed since season 1? 😭
I’mma ask you to pause on the Wilt stat there.
Although come to think of it, didnthe average 50 a whole season once?
50⁄25, but you could almost argue the craziest part is 48.5mpg
Pretty sure it was something absurd like 50 pts and 25 reb for a season
That wasn’t even the absurdest wilt nba stat that year. 48.5 mpg for the season
Also that 50 ppg year and 100 pt game was one of the few times wilt shot the free throws underhand, granny style
Why’d he decide to shoot granny style? Just for a change because regular style got boring?
Wilt’s ft% was not good. Shooting granny style gave him the highest ft% of his career. And his highest scoring game
The question you should be asking is if that was so, why did he go away from that and switch to the regular style if it was lower %
And the answer is his ego couldn’t take it. He felt shooting granny style made him look like a sissy (his words)
Thanks. Just like Shaq’s “I’d rather shoot 0% than shoot underhand”
Big men and ego things lol
Wilt was just not real man
wilt has to be a myth at this point dog
Wilt is a mythological monster
So wilt is 1st 2nd and 3rd on the list
Wilt is 1st with 118 btw lol
Averaging a 50 points season likely led to a lot of 50 point games i assume lmao
Hell, he scored 50 twice in one game!
118 in the regular season. 4 in the playoffs. Sums up Wilt’s career perfectly.
4 50 point games in the playoffs is a better career than 99% of nba players lmao
Unc still got it
Favorite player of 29 teams this season.
You left off this bit:
“Harden joins Bob McAdoo as only players in LA Clippers franchise history with multiple 50-point games.”
How on earth is this possible??? He’s been there like a year. Lob city never had a couple big games?
Imagine being a clipper fan
Nobody on Lob City shot enough realistically to hit 50 points. Chris Paul was always a table setter who only started hunting his own shot later into the game, and he ran the offense.
FWIW, Blake Griffin only hit 50 points once in his career, and that was when he was on the Pistons. He scored 47 once on the Clips, never 50. CP3’s career high is 43.
Lob city was super well distributed points wise.
Point is you would expect them to have a huge game at least a couple times over the years, though 50 is a big number of course .
That’s what I’m saying. I looked it up and as a franchise they’ve had like 9 ever.
Nuggets randomly had AG get one this year. Man, that’s rough clippers fans
Top five guard of all time
I made the mistake of saying he was better than Wade one time
It all depends how much u value rings. Hardens longevity and regular season production is top 15 all time
I don’t even think it’s the valuation on rings, I think some of us are willing to entertain the idea of Harden playing with Shaq while he was still good post Lakers, on a team completely willing to let him be the face of their franchise, unlike OKC. Or if Harden had a teammate for 5+ years who was either all defense 4+ of those years or all nba 4+ of those years. We saw him with Chris Paul.. IN LITERALLY CP3S WORST SEASONS almost beat the greatest team of all time…..
Rings matter a ton to me, but if Harden played with fucking LEBRON RAY ALLEN AND CHRIS BOSH, does ANYONE think he’d have lost to the mavs?
Ray Allen didn’t play for the Heat that season. Also, the Heat lost that series because Lebron played absolutely awful basketball. They led 2-1 and had a 10 point lead in the 4th quarter of game 4, a win would have given them a 3-1 lead. But Bron went scoreless that quarter, they ended up losing the game and he would average an abysmal 15ppg in those last three games on 44/16/40 shooting splits. This is a TWO TIME REIGNING MVP putting up that performance. It is probably the worst Finals performance of any player of that caliber in NBA history. Harden probably isn’t doing much more than Wade did that series, who averaged 26.5ppg on nearly 55% shooting. He would have stood by and watched Lebron choke away a championship just like Wade had to do…
I rank rings as a team accomplishment. MVPs over Rings when comparing players imo
That kind of spits in the face of what professional sport is all about, and especially team sports. The main goal is HELPING your team win championships. It’s not to win MVPs or to pad your career total stats. The sole aim of every single professional team sport is to win the championship. To diminish that is to show you don’t really understand why they play the game. Now of course there is context in those rings. If you are doing it as a role player eg Robert Horry then they obviously don’t mean as much as if you are winning rings and a Finals MVP to pair with each of those rings. But when we are talking top 10 or 20 players all time, the suggestion is that those players were the best players on their team and therefore played a very big role in their teams winning whatever championships they won. Quite simply, without that player the team does not win…..that is a very important distinction. So to disregard rings as a team accomplishment means you are disregarding that player’s huge role in that championship season. Again, it is THE most important goal so to dismiss it is just mind boggling. I’m taking the guy who wins three rings and three Finals MVPs but zero MVPs over a guy who wins three MVPs but zero rings and obviously no Finals MVPs. I honestly believe there is a huge bias at play with people like you….your favourite player is probably one who won less rings than his biggest rivals and so you do your best to diminish the importance of those rings in an attempt to place him above those rivals.
I am not reading all that respectfully. I’m assuming you disagree and that’s ok. I just don’t think rings matter as much when comparing players because smaller sample size.
MVPs are a team accomplishment too, pretty much mandatory to be a top 2 seed for the past 40 years.
MVPs over Rings when comparing players imo
Insane take lmao. MVPs have been a narrative contest for like 20 years now. Finals are when the ligths are brightest and the chaff and the wheat are spearated
Everybody has the same 82. Everybody don’t make the finals
I think he is better than wade.
MJ, Kobe, West, Steph, Magic (do you count magic as a guard ?) I have Wade over Harden
Who is he over in MJ, Kobe, Magic, Steph and West. I have all firmly above Harden.
He has a bright future in this league
A scoring god, really.
and to think im only 25 games away from tying that wish me luck 🤞
Luck
Absolute fuckin legend, crazy he’s still elite especially with all those miles on his body and those hammy injuries that definitely took some of his athleticism away
helps to be playing in a league where the hierarchy make it as easy as possible for players to score because they believe that is where the entertainment value lies….when you got role players dropping 50 it kind of diminishes the achievement when legends like Harden do the same.
Being on this list even though he’s sacrificed his scoring for the past 5 years speaks volumes
Tbf he looked washed the first season in Philly after his hamstring injury
Not bad for a guy that was out til 6 am this morning
We’re witnessing greatness yet some stupid kids say he’s washed