James Harden is doing something we have never seen before. The reigning MVP is playing the best basketball of his career since Chris Paul went down with a hamstring injury on December 20, averaging 41.8 points, 8.4 assists, and 6.2 rebounds over the past five games. The big change has been the sheer number of 3s that he’s taking: He’s averaging 16.4 attempts per game over that stretch. No one, not even Steph Curry, has shot 3s at anywhere near that rate. Harden isn’t just playing out of his mind—he’s pushing the limits of the sport.
Curry shattered the NBA record for most 3-point attempts per game in a season (11.2) during the Warriors’ 73-win season in 2015-16, with Harden coming in fourth (8.0). The two guards have been no. 1 and no. 2 in the NBA in 3-point attempts per game over the past two seasons, with the edge going to Curry in 2016-17, and to Harden last season. This season, Harden has pushed further past his old rival and reached escape velocity in this recent hot streak, raising his season average from 11.1 per game to 11.9 and climbing. Harden’s 3-point rates have increased in all 10 seasons of his NBA career, and they could go even higher in the years to come.
Harden is moving into uncharted territory, turning historical oddities into a nightly routine. There have been only 48 games in NBA history in which a player has attempted at least 17 3s. Harden has now done it in three of his past five. It’s hard to say what will come next. Maybe this is just a small sample size of five games. Maybe his massive workload will wear him down. Or maybe he is showing how powerful the 3-point shot can be in the right situation.
The answer is probably somewhere in the middle. No one knows the upper limit of the number of 3s a player can take during a 48-minute game. Harden and Curry removed the ceiling by mastering the ability to shoot 3s off the dribble. NBA teams used to create 3s by moving the ball around the court and shooting off the pass, which meant that even the greatest shooters still needed teammates to create shots for them. Harden and Curry can take a 3 anytime they want. But there’s a considerable difference in approach between the two. Curry’s shot profile still bears some resemblance to the players who came before him: 66.9 percent of his 3s have been assisted this season, compared to only 13.2 percent for Harden.
The step-back 3 has become Harden’s signature shot. It’s a 21st-century twist on Kareem Abdul-Jabbar’s sky hook. The same basic principles apply: Harden uses his broad frame (6-foot-5 and 220 pounds), long arms (6-foot-10 wingspan), and elite ballhandling ability to jump backward and shoot over defenders. Harden is 6-foot-5 instead of 7-foot-2, but he is shooting from so much farther away that any size advantage is no longer a factor. Big men a generation ago could at least try to muscle Kareem and push him out of position before he caught the ball. Harden is in position almost as soon as he crosses half court.
Harden can score over anyone, but the beauty of his game is that he can usually dictate who is defending him. The Rockets have built their offense around creating mismatches for their best player. They run him through a maze of on-ball screens and dribble handoffs, trying to create separation between him and his initial defender. Even if that player can get over one screen and stay in front of Harden, another screen is coming right after, and another after that. If the defender falls even a step behind, Harden either has an open 3 or a different defender has to step up and guard him. He can pick and choose whom he wants to attack, probing until he finds the weak link and then exploiting it.
To be sure, Harden doesn’t just shoot 3s. He uses his astronomical 3-point rate (54.6 percent of his total field goal attempts) to open up the rest of his game. There are defensive counters for a player who bombs away from the 3-point line, even in this era. What makes Harden so indefensible is that he has the ideal counters for those counters. The two most important are his ability to draw fouls (no. 1 in the league in free throw attempts, with 11.1 per game) and to make plays for others (no. 5 in assists with 8.4 per game). He combines volume 3-point shooting, elite passing, and free throw shooting in a way no player ever has before.
Harden has created a new kind of triple-double: a game with at least 10 3-point attempts, 10 free throw attempts, and 10 assists. There have been 91 of those games in NBA history, and Harden has logged 41 of them. His most recent came in Houston’s 113-102 win over Memphis on New Year’s Eve, when he had 13 assists, 12 3-point attempts, and 27 free throw attempts. His new-and-improved playing style puts pressure on even the best defenses. Harden scored 41 points against the Thunder (the league’s no. 1 defense) on Christmas Day, 45 points against the Celtics (no. 4), and 43 points against the Grizzlies (no. 5). And with Harden going supernova, the Rockets have suddenly moved up to the no. 4 seed in the Western Conference, only 3.5 games out of first place headed into their showdown with the Warriors on Thursday.
There is reason to believe that his offensive explosion is at least somewhat sustainable. He’s taking what he has been doing over the past three seasons to its logical conclusion. Everything changed for Harden when Mike D’Antoni became the Rockets head coach in 2016-17 and moved him to point guard. He is the first (and only) player in NBA history to average at least 10 3-point attempts and eight assists per game in a season. He makes his teammates better in two distinct ways: He creates shots for them like a point guard, and he creates space for them like a shooting guard, combining the impact of two elite players into one.
The position switch didn’t just make Harden better—it supercharged the entire offense. The Rockets had an offensive rating of 114.7 that season, the 10th best in NBA history, even though Harden was their only All-Star. They had the exact same offensive rating after trading for Paul the following season. Harden’s presence alone almost guarantees a historically great offense.
Harden is the right player on the right team at the right time. The NBA is in the midst of a scoring boom that is challenging some of our most basic assumptions about the sport. The 3-point rates for teams have been rising even faster than they have been for individuals over the past few seasons. The Rockets, who have always emphasized analytics under GM Daryl Morey, have been at the forefront of that trend. They were tied for the league lead in 3-point attempts per game in 2012-13, Harden’s first season with the team, with 28.9. That same number would put them all the way down at no. 23 this season.
Houston has always stayed one step ahead of the rest of the league. Every time someone matches the team’s 3-point rate, it pushes the envelope a little further. The Rockets lead the NBA with 42.6 3-point attempts per game this season, which has gone up to 46.0 over the past five games. It’s not just the number of 3s that separates them, either. They use the shot differently than most teams. Milwaukee, which is no. 2 in 3-point attempts per game at 39.3, uses all of its shooters to create space for Giannis Antetokounmpo, who is shooting 15.2 percent from 3 on 2.3 attempts per game, to attack the rim. Houston’s supporting cast creates space for Harden to shoot even more 3s.
The Rockets turned Harden into a historically unique player. He wasn’t one when he came into the league. He was a 6-foot-5 shooting guard with a relatively high percentage of body fat and an average vertical leap. He didn’t have the freakish combination of size, skill, and athleticism that guys like LeBron James or Kevin Durant did. There was no guarantee that he would ever become an All-Star, let alone an MVP. He became one only when he was given the ultimate green light from 3.
The irony is that he has never been a particularly accurate shooter. Curry was always destined for greatness in that category: He’s a career 43.7 percent 3-point shooter who has never shot lower than 41.1 percent from 3 in 10 seasons. Harden is a career 36.6 percent shooter who has never shot higher than 39.0 percent in any of his 10 seasons. What the Rockets figured out is that it didn’t matter. The amount of stress the 3-point shot puts on a defense means that even a player without the same touch as Curry could be just as dominant if he were taking 3s at a high enough rate.
The question that every NBA team should be asking is whether there are any young players out there who could make a Harden-like leap in the years to come. There are a couple of key identifiers: The next Harden should be a bigger guard who has shown the ability to shoot 3s off the dribble, make plays for others, and get to the free throw line. There are 38 players in the league this season who are averaging at least 6.0 3-point attempts per game. Five are under the age of 23, including Devin Booker and Luka Doncic—who are both ahead of where Harden was at a comparable point in his career.
It has been a slow climb for Booker, a shooting specialist in his one season at Kentucky. He didn’t come into the league as a high-level playmaker: He averaged 2.6 assists and 2.1 turnovers per game in his rookie season with the Suns. He has been stuck on one of the worst organizations in the league over the past four seasons, but it may have been the best thing to happen to his career. Booker has been given every opportunity to develop into a primary ball handler, and he has turned himself into one of the most well-rounded young players in the league. He is a 6-foot-6 guard averaging 25.5 points on 44.9 percent shooting, 7.2 assists, and 3.9 rebounds per game this season.
Booker has developed an unfair reputation as a player who puts up empty stats on bad teams. He’s no longer just a gunner. He makes players around him better, and the Suns have been playing significantly better basketball over the past few weeks. They have gone 5-6 since starting the season at 4-24, and they have a net rating of minus-1.5 in their past 11 games. It took rookie head coach Igor Kokoskov some time to find the right lineups around Booker. They are now building a version of the Rockets with Booker in the Harden role, T.J. Warren as the secondary scorer, Mikal Bridges as a 3-and-D wing, and Deandre Ayton as the roll man.
Doncic has hit the ground running as a 19-year-old rookie. He has been the best player on a surprisingly competitive Mavs team, averaging 19.5 points on 43.6 percent shooting, 6.6 rebounds, and 5.0 assists per game. His game is incredibly advanced for such a young player, and he has earned more responsibility as the season has gone on. Doncic started off primarily as a scorer, averaging 4.4 assists and 4.0 turnovers per game in October, and has become the Mavs’ primary playmaker as well, with averages of 6.1 assists and 3.1 turnovers in November. Dallas can’t afford to take the ball out of his hands.
The big decision the Mavs have to make going forward is about what will happen to Dennis Smith Jr., whom they drafted last season to be their point guard of the future. Smith has been up-and-down in his second season, showing improvement as an outside shooter and defensive player while struggling to adjust to a smaller role in the offense. Smith could theoretically become the Paul to Luka’s Harden, but he’s still a long way from being even an average NBA player. Dallas might be better off moving Doncic to point guard full time, and then putting him in supersized lineups where he’s the smallest player on the floor at 6-foot-7.
The next step for Booker and Doncic as individuals is to take a lot more 3s. Booker is averaging 7.3 3-point attempts per game, which puts him at no. 9 in the league, while Doncic is averaging 6.1, all the way down in a tie at no. 27. It won’t happen overnight. Harden’s biggest season-to-season increase in 3-point attempts per game is 1.9. It takes time to change a player’s shot profile and build the right habits to launch 3s at a sustainable rate. There’s no reason that it can’t happen over enough time, though, and that’s what the Suns and the Mavs need to be working toward.
The clearest route to superstardom going forward is mastering the ability to generate a lot of 3s for yourself and for your teammates. Players who can do that will make the most direct impact on winning because they will be creating the most important shots in the game. There’s no way to know for sure who those players will be. Booker and Doncic could be part of a whole generation of wings who try and fail to play like Harden in the same way that a whole generation of shooting guards tried and failed to play like Michael Jordan.
The more exciting possibility is that the next generation of players will surpass Harden. He’s not the most precise player. His 3-point percentage this season (38.7) is good but not great, and he has only an average assist-to-turnover ratio (1.54-to-1). What if the first player to average 15 3-point attempts per game over a whole season shoots better than 40 percent from 3 and has an assist-to-turnover ratio of better than 2-to-1? We may not need to wait for guys like Booker or Doncic to develop, either. There’s a current generation of stars who could start playing like Harden now, established veterans who could make adjustments to their game a lot faster than younger players.
Curry is the most obvious example. If Durant leaves in free agency this summer, the Warriors may need to abandon head coach Steve Kerr’s equal-opportunity offense and let Curry dominate the ball. The same holds true for Durant, no matter where he winds up. He has never taken more than 6.7 3-point attempts per game in a season, and he could easily dribble into 3s at a much higher rate. He’s so tall that he wouldn’t even need to use the stepback. The other great player who has been experimenting with that shot this season is LeBron James, who is shooting a career-high 5.6 3-pointers per game. Even LeBron can’t maintain his athleticism forever. If he wants to remain an elite player deep into his 30s, he will need to start taking a lot more 3s.
Harden will have a lasting legacy even if he never wins a championship. The greatest players in NBA history change the way the game is played, and Harden has blazed a trail for the next generation. That might not sound exciting for the many fans who dislike his isolation-heavy style of basketball, as well as the cynical way he manipulates the rulebook to draw fouls and slow the pace of the game to a crawl. But the best players can’t afford to be philosophical. The NBA is too competitive, and it’s changing too fast to get stuck in old ways. Harden didn’t start taking 16 3s per game as a science experiment. He did it because it was the only way for the Rockets to win. He has pushed the bar higher than it has ever been. Now the rest of the league has to catch up.
