James Harden Continues to Climb NBA All-Time Scoring List by Passing Shaquille O’Neal

James Harden’s 32 points against the Hornets on Monday night earned him ninth place on the NBA’s all-time scoring list. | Kirby Lee-Imagn Images

James Harden has been among the NBA’s very best at scoring points for well over a decade at this point. After a 32-point outing against the Hornets on Monday, the All-Star guard has another feather to put in his cap on that front.

With the big performance Harden officially moved to ninth on the NBA’s all-time points scored list. He surpassed Shaquille O’Neal to do so. Harden has now scored 28,614 points in his professional basketball career.

JAMES HARDEN PASSES SHAQ FOR NINTH ON THE ALL-TIME SCORING LIST 🤩 pic.twitter.com/Y0vwgaLpT0

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It is a remarkable achievement. Passing Shaq is an honor on its own; the Hall of Fame big man is one of basketball’s most purely dominant scorers in the lengthy history of the league. While he didn’t rack up quite as many points as his talents would have allowed due to an infamous lack of interest in offseason conditioning, and Harden plays in a far more scorer-friendly era of the game, Shaq is still a mighty impressive name to pass on the scoring list.

Harden earned the achievement, though. He was a pioneer of the NBA’s three-point revolution and was an offensive system unto himself for many years with the Rockets. And he remains singularly talented at putting the ball through the hoop. Harden led the NBA in scoring three different times, with his peak coming in the form of 2018-19’s 36.1 points per game average. Now at age 36 and with tons of NBA miles on his legs Harden is still getting buckets, putting up 25.8 points a night for a Clippers squad desperately in need of his production.

How much higher can James Harden get on the all-time scoring list?

After the shock of Harden passing Shaq wears off, the natural follow-up is just how high the superstar guard can get on the all-time scoring list.

There obviously is no concrete answer to that question but there’s a chance Harden doesn’t move out of ninth place. He’s 2,805 points behind Wilt Chamberlain for eighth place. If Harden maintained his average of about 25 points per game for the foreseeable future, it would take him 113 games to pass Chamberlain. In other words Harden would have to keep up his current pace for another season and a half, into his age-38 season, to jump above another legend on the all-time scoring list.

It’s not impossible. And if he managed to do so Harden would be in striking distance of numerous other big names like Dirk Nowitizki and Michael Jordan. But it’ll be a tall task given he has 16 NBA seasons under his belt already and history suggests the drop-off, when it happens, will be steep for a player with Harden’s resume of intense minutes logged over the years.

It will certainly be fun to watch him try, however. Harden remains a marvel.

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