Houston Rockets: James Harden is the Most Durable Star in the League

Here’s how the numbers illustrate one of the most overlooked things about Houston Rockets’ guard James Harden.

Rockets’ star James Harden has a weird reputation of being unreliable but that narrative prevents people from seeing the fact that this is simply not true. Not only is Harden the most clutch player in the NBA but he is also very durable. In fact in my opinion, Harden is the most durable star in the league. We can take a look at the games played and the minutes played.

For starters, if you want to argue that LeBron James is the most durable, I’ll give you that, as it seems like he’s in the NBA Finals every year. However, this past season that changed, which would be my counter argument. But not only that, LeBron has only played in more regular season games than Harden once in the last 5 years.

What about Kevin Durant? Well, Durant hasn’t played more regular season games than Harden in the last 5 years. Furthermore, Harden has played more minutes per game than Durant in each of the last 5 years. Not to mention the fact that Harden is by far the focal point of the offense whereas Durant has been surrounded by multiple All-Stars in each of the last 3 years with the Warriors.

The most overlooked thing about Harden is his durability. In fact, last season Harden played more minutes than anyone that was named to any of the All-NBA teams. In addition, the only other First Team All-NBA player to play more games than Harden was Nikola Jokic.

We always see Harden play through injuries and he never wants to rest games, which is rare for the modern day superstar. We always see players rest on back-to-backs for load management and we also commonly see players sit out the last several games of the season to rest up for the playoffs, but not Harden.

Harden arguably bears the heaviest load of any superstar in the entire league and plays through it. Year after year, the Rockets have gone on deep playoff runs with Harden as the focal point of the offense.

Hopefully, this aspect of Harden’s game won’t continue to be overlooked, because we are truly witnessing greatness!