Harden's season "seems" like it will be more memorable? Oy vey. What Harden has produced this season has never been done since Wilt and Jordan. Everyone believed that Wilt's records would stand forever let alone beat due to his utter dominance in the Jurassic era of NBA. Rules had to be made to level the playing field. Wilt was simply the most dominant player of his era or any era. No one has been held to Wilt's scoring standard before, until Harden. Plus Harden is on threshold of surpassing the modern era's greatest player of all time's greatest scoring season average. Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain are THE only players that can compare with Harden THIS season. Yes, I am certain that Harden's legendary season will be more memorable than Giannis. No "seems" necessary.
You can also compare Kobe’s 35 ppg season to what Harden is doing. Kobe’s season was far more comparable to Harden’s than what Wilt did back in the early 60s. Getting into a debate over the word “seems” really isn’t it worth it for me, so I’ll resist the urge to respond to the rest.
Kobe led his team to 7th in the West with that performance. This is a bit different. MJ led his team to a 40-42 record. This is a bigger difference. Here's something that's super legit about this performance: If James Harden reaches 50 wins while scoring >36ppg with the Rockets, he'll be the ONLY player in NBA history to do this. Everyone else did it on struggling teams.
Agreed. In fact, aside from that 50 point game from Giannis, I can't remember a "wow, this dude should be MVP" game or a "wow, the MVP is doing what an MVP does" moment from him. There are probably 10+ moments / games where you can say that about Harden.
That’s cool. I’m just saying that what Harden is doing this year is more similar to Kobe’s season than Wilt’s, in terms of frequency of points scored and how he scored the points.
Ah gotcha, you're looking for the closest comparison. With the number of assists that Harden has.. good luck finding any decent comparison. Same could be said about Wilt though... who will ever average 50 points per game AND 25 rebounds. I mean, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dennis Rodman, but dude got 18.7 rebounds per game in his best season. How will anyone touch 25?
Lou Williams will likely have the 6th man of the year sewn up. That's the role he relishes. That and playing the middle man.
LOL. Can't figure out your agenda, I refuse to be believe that you are hating on Harden like this but sometimes a rose is just a rose. Harden is doing Wilt things this season, Kobe was never this efficient. In fact Harden is out Wilting the Stilt even, his dominance is leading to a top 3 seed.
In raw numbers yes kobe. But efficiency, impact, wins no. Kobe was straight up filling the stats Harden is first and foremost filling up the wins
My agenda in this case is correcting a historically-ignorant statement. It is ridiculous to say that Harden’s season is somehow comparable to Wilt’s, but not Kobe’s. Today’s game at least somewhat resembles the game as played in 2005. It is nothing like the game as played in 1962. And to say that Harden’s season is more similar to Kobe’s than Wilt’s is not to diminish it. Kobe actually scored more frequently than Wilt ever did in his 05/06 season. Wilt played a ton of minutes in an era where teams averaged probably 120 possessions a game. That’s why he scored a lot of points per game. As for efficiency, Wilt was not an efficient scorer in his most prolific scoring seasons, by today’s standards. So if you want to argue Kobe can’t be compared to Harden on that basis, why would you even compare Wilt to him? An interesting stat from their non-comparable seasons: Highest scoring month for Harden — January ‘19 with 43.6 ppg and 61 ts% and 4.5 +/-. For Kobe — January ‘06 with 43.4 ppg and 61 ts% and 4.5 +/-.
This ain't even about the MVP award anymore. Harden having one of the all time great seasons. Harden can drop 50 and barely get a mention cause it ain't a big deal, meanwhile Antenekoumpo drops 50 and the media goes nuts like he's a shaq/lebron hybrid set to dominate the league for the next 20 years.
