Harden currently leads the league at 11.2 assists per game but Wall isn't far behind at 10.9. Wall has been turning it on as of late and had 20 assists in his last game. Harden could easily lose being the assists leader by a thin margin just like he barely lost being the scoring leader back in 2014. Harden had the lead for most of that season but Westbrook came back from injury (while Durant got hurt) and he started putting up huge scoring games. He took it even though he had played 14 less games. It would've only helped Harden's MVP candidacy that season. Westbrook pretty much has the runaway lead in scoring this year along with his triple doubles. Harden has to keep up the assist lead or else the only category he would be leading in is turnovers which the critics and media members voting for MVP would use his against him in a heartbeat.
last thing we need is Harden assist hunting leading to even more high risk passes and high turnover games
I've been seeing this too, but Harden pretty much has this sowed up. He is 24 assists over what Wall has as an average. That means if Harden only averaged 10.4 apg (which is his lowest he's done in a month on average) for the remaining 13 games then Wall would have to average 12.1 his last 14 to catch up. What I'm interested in is Harden catching Thomas for 2nd in scoring average. He is only 6 pts off his pace (0.10).