Rocket’s James Harden Scores Career High 51 Points

James Harden of the Houston Rockets scored a career high 51 points to help the team defeat The Sacramento Kings 115-111 on Wednesday. Harden finished the game with 51 points, 8 rebounds, 6 assists, and 3 steals.

Harden, an MVP favorite among the Golden State Warriors’ Stephen Curry and Oklahoma City Thunder’s Russell Westbrook, recently scored his previous career high of 50 points less than two weeks ago against the Denver Nuggets. Harden finished that game with 50 points, 10 rebounds, 4 assists, and 1 steal.

One notable aspect of his 50 point game was that nearly half of those points, 22, came from 25 free throw attempts. Impressively that wasn’t the case this evening as only 11 free throw points counted toward his career high 51, with 13 total free throw attempts. The remaining 40 points were scored from the field including 8 out of 9 attempted three pointers.

Rockets’ center Dwight Howard, who returned last week against The New Orleans Pelicans, did not play tonight but is expected to reappear in Thursday’s game against Western Conference rival Dallas Mavericks.