After 438 regular-season games, James Harden has finally joined the likes of Terrence Ross, Mo Williams, Corey Brewer and Andre Miller as a 50-point NBA scorer.
Harden dropped a career-high 50 in the Rockets' 118-108 win over the Denver Nuggets on Thursday night, and he did it in the most Harden way imaginable: by taking 25 trips to the charity stripe, and converting twice as many free throws (22) as the entire Nuggets team combined.
That made up for a relatively ho-hum shooting night, in which he hit 12-of-27 from the field and 4-of-12 from deep. It's also the seventh time this season Harden has crossed the 40-point threshold, tying Russell Westbrook for most in the NBA.
The few occasions when Harden was able to connect from beyond the arc had a lot to do with the Nuggets' willingness to oblige him, running some transition defense that looked to be ripped straight out of the Otto Porter playbook.
Defensive lapses aside, though, credit the Nuggets for hanging around in the game, even as the Rockets looked poised to ice it on multiple occasions. They got 23 points apiece from Wilson Chandler and Randy Foye, and 19 points and 12 rebounds from Kenneth Faried.
Though they seemed content a few short weeks ago to sleepwalk through their final few 2014-15 games as they trudged toward the promise of offseason bliss, the Nuggets have perked up recently in the wake of Brian Shaw's firing.
They've notched wins over the Atlanta Hawks and Golden State Warriors (though the Warriors were resting several starters), and even with Thursday's loss, they're 6-4 in the Melvin Hunt era.
The Rockets, meanwhile, improved to 46-22, quietly creeping to within a game of the Memphis Grizzlies for second in the Western Conference. They may, however, be looking at a few games without Terrence Jones, who suffered a rib injury in the game and is spending the night in the hospital.
