A good case study would be Dame. #2 and 3 Players going down. Without Cj and Nurk, let’s see what he can do.
Through 73 games, Harden has 2656 points. If Harden play all 5 games, he needs to reach 2893 points to beat Jordan's 37.1 PPG season. So he needs 237 more points in 5 games. Harden needs to average 47.4 PPG in the last 5 games to beat Jordan's 37.1 PPG season.
Just independently calculated this, and this is correct. Jordan's '86-'87 season was 3041/82 = 37.085 ppg. Harden needs 2893 to just skirt above that, so 47.4 ppg in the last 5 games. I mean, this is his 10th game beating that this year. In 73 games played. So 48+ pts in 13.7% of his games this year. He could absolutely do it, but he's not a Westbrook, so if it happens, it'll because the team needed it, not because he wanted to do it.
The thing is, Jordan averaged more minutes, and he played more games than Harden will this season. Harden probably would have done it.
I have to make a correction here(or at least tell a fuller stats story): Elgin Baylor did not lead the league in scoring in 61-62 because of Wilt's 50ppg, but Elgin had 38 ppg during the 61-62 season and his team won 54 games. However, it should be noted that Elgin played only 44 of the team's 80 games that year so one could easily argue that his contribution to the 50 wins isn't nearly as significant as Hardens. Elgin played 55% of his team's games that year(37 Ws when he played). Harden has played 95% of the Rockets games so far this year(48 Ws when he played). Elgin did not even play enough games to qualify for a scoring leader that year. (Edit: found out it's because he was in the Army reserves) Cool stat for Elgin: His team won 84% of the games he played in that year. This would be on pace for a 70 win total season.
I hope that was due to injury, but I can imagine an old-school coach saying, "You keep shooting that much, I'm gonna put your ass on the bench where it belongs."
Yeah, points per game is not a good statistical quantity, but it just comes across easier than trying to drill "points per 36 minutes" or "points per 100 possessions" into fans' heads, even though those are properly normalized quantities. For the record: Points per 36 minutes: Jordan, '86-'87: 33.4 Harden. '18-'19: 35.3 Points per 100 possessions: Jordan, '86-'87: 46.4 Harden. '18-'19: 48.1
According to BBRef's GameScore, last night's 50 points triple double was only Harden's 10th best game of the season. Let that sink in.
Imagine if Giannis had a game like that. You'd never hear the end of it. Harden just casually gets these 50 point games and we're not surprised by it.
