James Harden once again exploded Thursday dropping 58 points as the Rockets defeated the Miami Heat 121-118.
The league’s leading scorer now has six 50-point games this season and is well in front of second place Paul George for the scoring title.
The majority of Harden’s shot attempts on Thursday night came from 3-point range – a grand total of 18 of his 32 shot attempts were from the land beyond. As a team, the Rockets shot 46 of their 77 shot attempts from long range.
Rockets head coach Mike D’Antoni talked about the adjustments he's made through his coaching career on Wednesday ahead of the Rockets’ win over the Hornets, saying that if he knew better in Phoenix, the team probably would’ve shot way more threes then as well.
"Since we started doing it in Phoenix, and we were only taking 25 [3-pointers per game],” D’Antoni said Wednesday.
“I messed up because I was listening (to the critics), and we would lose and I would go 'eh maybe we took too many threes' and in reality, we should have taken more.”
With the advanced stats at his disposal, D’Antoni has the Rockets launching threes at a high clip. They lead the league taking 44.8 triples per game — close to seven more than second-place Milwaukee.
Hindsight, of course, is always 20/20, but D’Antoni talked about how he could’ve encouraged his Phoenix teams to shoot more long balls, especially considering the shooting they had available.
“I should have insisted on Steve Nash – one of the best shooters in the history of the game – to take more,” D’Antoni continued.
“It makes sense now. We didn't have analytics and we didn't know if that was a good thing or not and after a while, I wasn't quite bold enough."
Nash’s career turned out fine despite not having the neon green light Harden has to take threes. He finished his career with two league MVPs and was inducted to the Naismith Hall of Fame this past summer and will go down in history as one of the game’s greatest playmakers.
But, had he had the ability to take 13.5 threes a game — Harden’s average this season — would he have been known as one of the game’s greatest scorers too?