With 23 points in just the first quarter of Friday’s opening game of the NBA restart, Houston Rockets superstar James Harden passed Hall of Famer Calvin Murphy for second on the franchise’s all-time scoring list.
Murphy scored 17,949 points for the Rockets over his storied career from 1970 through 1983. Harden still has a ways to go to catch Hakeem Olajuwon, who leads the Rockets with 26,511 career points in Houston.
Harden entered Friday leading the Rockets and the NBA with a 34.3 points per game scoring average, which is just the third time in over 30 years that a player has averaged at least 34 points in a season. (The other two were Harden’s 36.1 last season and Kobe Bryant’s 35.4 in 2005-06.)
Assuming he keeps his scoring average above 34 following the eight regular-season games of the restart, Harden will become just the third player in league history to average at least 34 points in two different seasons, joining Michael Jordan and Wilt Chamberlain.
Over his eight seasons to date in Houston, Harden has earned All-Star honors in all of them while leading his Rockets to the playoffs. The future Hall of Famer was the NBA’s 2017-18 MVP and a three-time MVP runner-up, and he appears poised for another top-three MVP finish this season.
