8. James Harden
Even if some NBA purists see his singular on-ball dominance as an affront to the beauty of basketball, James Harden’s torrid scoring pace and one-man offensive production has already catapulted him into the conversation of “greatest shooting guards of all time.” Those same detractors will point to the fact that he not only hasn’t won an NBA title, and that he’s also looked like the deer in the proverbial headlights on more than one occasion in the playoffs. But there’s simply no denying how consistently dominant he’s been during the regular season, as a member of the Houston Rockets.
Between 2015 and 2018, Harden averaged a ridiculous 29.5 points, 9.1 assists, and 6.6 rebounds per game, capping off one of the most impressive three-year runs of any player in league history (note: Harden won the 2018 NBA MVP, but should’ve also won it the year before, if voters weren’t so enamored with Russell Westbrook’s triple-double stat line). As an encore, between late October of 2019 through early February of 2020, Harden averaged a mind-bending 36.4 points, 7.2 assists, and 6.6 rebounds per game, while shooting over 44% from the field.