{"id":118380,"date":"2025-01-16T13:49:53","date_gmt":"2025-01-16T18:49:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/?p=118380"},"modified":"2025-01-16T13:49:53","modified_gmt":"2025-01-16T18:49:53","slug":"james-harden-top-15-scoring-list","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/2025\/01\/16\/james-harden-top-15-scoring-list\/","title":{"rendered":"James Harden Moves Into Top-15 Of All-Time Scoring List"},"content":{"rendered":"

Particularly in his time with the Houston Rockets, James Harden<\/a> was one of the most-talented scorers that the game has ever seen. While some weren\u2019t fond of his habit of chasing fouls to earn an extraordinary amounts of trips to the foul line, he gave the opposition nightmares every game.<\/p>\n

Now in his 16th season, the Los Angeles Clippers guard isn\u2019t quite the scorer he was, but is still averaging 21.5 points an outing on the season. Harden\u2019s elite ability to put the ball in the basket now has him in the top-15 on the NBA\u2019s all-time scoring list.<\/p>\n

James Harden Moves Into Top-15 Of All-Time Scoring List<\/h2>\n

James Harden Moves Past The Human Highlight Film In Career Points<\/h3>\n

On Wednesday night, the Clippers had one of the biggest blowouts in league history. The final margin was a whopping 59 points as they defeated the Brooklyn Nets 126-67<\/a>. In the easy victory, Harden scored 21 points.<\/p>\n

After Wednesday, the 35-year-old has now totaled 26,681 points in his career. That now places him 15th in career points in league history. Harden was able to surpass the great Dominique Wilkins<\/a> who scored 26,668 points in his Hall of Fame career. Known as \u2018The Human Highlight Film\u2019, Wilkins won a scoring title in 1985-86 and averaged 24.8 points per game over 15 NBA seasons.<\/p>\n

Through 39 Clippers games in 2024-25, Harden has only missed two. That puts him at a pace to appear in 78 games on the season. With his 21.5 scoring average in 2024-25, he would score about 882 more points this season if his current rates hold up. That would also allow Harden to pass Oscar Robertson<\/a> (26,710), Hakeem Olajuwon<\/a> (26,946), Elvin Hayes<\/a> (27,313), and Moses Malone<\/a> (27,409) later in the season.<\/p>\n

Won Three-Straight Scoring Titles With Rockets<\/h3>\n

The 6-foot-5 Harden certainly has put points up in bunches, and did so at his finest while with the Rockets. For three straight seasons from 2017-18 until 2019-20, Harden was the league\u2019s scoring champ. In the first of those, he was named the league\u2019s MVP<\/a>. In 2018-19, Harden averaged an astonishing 36.1 points per game. That\u2019s the seventh-highest average<\/a> in league history only behind five Wilt Chamberlain<\/a> seasons and Michael Jordan<\/a> in 1986-87.<\/p>\n

Selected with the third overall pick by the Oklahoma City Thunder, Harden is with his fifth NBA team. Along with the Clippers, Rockets, and Thunder, Harden has also donned the jersey of the Brooklyn Nets and Philadelphia 76ers. In 1,109 career regular season games, Harden has averaged 24.1 points. For eight straight seasons from 2012-13 until 2019-20 (all with Houston), he averaged more than 25 points. He scored his career-high of 61 points twice within two months doing so on both January 23 and March 22, 2019. Harden also dropped 60 twice, and his four games with 60+ points are tied for the fourth-most all-time<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Harden already had been in the top-15 in career assists<\/a>. He has 7,926 in his 16 years, placing him with the 14th-most in NBA history. He soon will be passing Rod Strickland<\/a> for 13th, as Strickland tallied 7,987 for his career. Harden also has 1,651 steals, good for 27th-most all-time<\/a>. When his career is all said and done, very few will be able to say they could come close to matching the numbers that James Harden will have.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Particularly in his time with the Houston Rockets, James Harden was one of the most-talented scorers that the game has ever seen. While some weren\u2019t fond of his habit of chasing fouls to earn an extraordinary amounts of trips to the foul line, he gave the opposition nightmares every game. Now in his 16th season, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5060,"featured_media":118450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1608,27,62,3],"tags":[2052,2064,444,2013],"class_list":["post-118380","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-basketball","category-clippers","category-nba","category-news","tag-all-time-list","tag-dominique-wilkins","tag-james-harden","tag-scoring-titles"],"modified_by":"Kenny Kluska","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118380","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5060"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=118380"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118380\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":118452,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/118380\/revisions\/118452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/118450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=118380"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=118380"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/basketball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=118380"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}