Harden: I have never been this confident playing in my entire career
If you haven't noticed yet, James Harden is cooking.
At 31.5 points per game, the barbate Houston Rockets guard is far and away the league's leading scorer, sitting 3.3 points clear of Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo (28.2) and 4.1 points ahead of Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (27.4).
His team also currently owns the second-best winning percentage in the NBA at 72.7 percent, trailing only the Warriors (78.7). That deficit looked notably meager on Saturday, however, when Houston defeated Golden State 116-108, a win Rockets center Clint Capela believes sent the defending champs a sizable message.
Harden, meanwhile, not only shared Capela's optimism but also revealed the new-look Rockets - with Chris Paul complementing him in the backcourt - have him playing at a level he's never reached before.
"We're for real, for real. We are for real as it can get," Harden told The Undefeated's Marc J. Spears. "I have never been this confident playing in my entire career. Not only by adding Chris, but the rest of our team.
"We have a team with depth that at any moment can impact the game. We just got to stay locked in the rest of the season."
With Saturday's win over the Warriors, the Rockets succeeded in winning the season series 2-1 over Golden State. Should the two teams finish with identical records, Houston would own the tiebreaker for home-court advantage in the playoffs.
“It was a big statement, because we definitely wanted to win the tiebreaker,” shooting guard Eric Gordon said. "We know we are only a couple games behind them and we're going to start making a big run here.
"We can try to see if we can get that No. 1 seed. That's what we really want."