The Houston Rockets star’s points binge is reaching historic heights. Here are the numbers that tell the tale of one of the most thrilling rides in recent NBA history.

James Harden is the only NBA player other than Wilt Chamberlain to score 30-plus points in 20 consecutive games. It’s easy to marvel at any number from Harden’s historic run, but that simple fact emerges from the crowd much like Harden’s absurd 35.7 points-per-game figure emerges from the mass of near-30 averages this season. Yet a closer look only enhances the amazement produced by Harden’s 2018-19 season. Here are five lesser-heralded but equally fascinating facts about Harden’s current run:

1. Harden would still lead the league in scoring even if free throws didn’t count.

Post any positive thought about Harden online, and hordes will respond with accusations that the Rockets star’s success is mostly a product of gaming the NBA foul system. So for a moment, forget that drawing fouls is a skill—a valuable and repeatable and legitimate basketball skill—and pretend that all free throws disappeared from the league’s record books.

Without his cheating go-to, Harden would obviously tumble down the scoring leaderboards, from first all the way to … first. He scores 25.7 points per game besides his free throws, a smidge better than Steph Curry’s 24.7 sans free throws. That total also would give Harden one of the 25 best free throw–less scoring seasons in league history, and the second-best since Michael Jordan’s prime.

The dirty secret about free throws is that almost every high-scoring player relies on them to some degree to amass his lofty points totals. Counting Harden this season, the NBA has seen 68 30-point-per-game seasons in its history, and those players averaged 10.2 free throw attempts per game. Harden’s 11.6 this season tilts toward the high end of that group, but Jordan averaged 11.9 one season, Allen Iverson averaged 11.5 in a slower-pace era, and Jerry West exceeded 12 per game twice. Harden reaches the line a perhaps frustrating number of times for opposing fans, but it’s not why he scores a frustrating number of points overall.

2. Harden would still lead the league in scoring even if the 3-point line disappeared.

Along the same lines, let’s imagine all the league’s 3s turned to 2s, stripping away the extra value Harden gleans from pushing the heretofore accepted limits of the sport. (Rockets GM Daryl Morey might protest, but let’s go with it for the sake of the hypothetical.) Now all Harden’s 13.1 3-point attempts per game are just really long 2s, worth the same number of points as Clint Capela’s dunks. If you read the subhead for this section, you know how this experiment goes too.

Harden with 3s-as-2s scores 30.7 points per game, well ahead of second-place Anthony Davis’s 28.4. As Jon Bois explored for SB Nation, the best teams would still be the best teams even with the removal of the 3-point line. It turns out the same is true for the best players too.

3. Harden could go scoreless over the rest of the season and still end up scoring more points for the Rockets this season than Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin, Steven Adams, Mitch McGary, and Alex Abrines project to score, combined, for the Thunder.

Sorry, OKC fans; that one’s too mean to count. Here’s the real no. 3:

3. Harden is obliterating precedent by scoring so many unassisted buckets.

Especially with Chris Paul and Capela sidelined with injuries, Harden has been forced to shoulder Houston’s offensive burden all by himself. Both his usage and scoring output have increased—and the assists from his teammates have decreased. In a recent three-game stretch, Harden scored 163 points, all of them unassisted.

Overall this season, 88.1 percent of Harden’s made field goals are unassisted. That’s a remarkably high ratio, but it’s not completely isolated from the rest of the sport. Since 2000-01 (the first year that Basketball-Reference features this data), it ranks second to Steve Nash’s 88.8 percent in 2009-10, and other seasons from Nash, Paul, and even Reggie Jackson huddle close.

But Harden’s rate of unassisted 3-pointers is without even approximate precedent. Since 2000-01, there have been 1,031 times in which a player converted at least 100 3-pointers in a season. On average, just 17 percent of their made 3s were unassisted—that’s just one in six, and it makes sense given how most 3-pointers arise from catch-and-shoot opportunities.

Harden used to situate near that average, but he has since risen to previously unexplored heights with off-the-bounce 3s. The prior high for unassisted 3-point rate in a season with 100-plus makes was Paul’s 76 percent last season, when Harden was at 74; the highest mark for a non-Rocket is Nash’s 73 percent in 2009-10. Harden this season is at an outrageous 88 percent, meaning seven in eight 3s he makes are unassisted. Nobody else is even in the same neighborhood as Harden, who claims the lonely red dot all the way in upper-right corner of this graph.

In raw totals, the record for most made, unassisted 3s in a season is 196—from Harden last season. The non-Harden record is 182, from Steph Curry in his record-shattering 2015-16 season. (Even Curry’s unassisted 3s are more a matter of overall volume than a Hardenesque quality—the four rightmost dots besides Harden’s on the graph represent various Curry campaigns; all of them have a sub-50 percent unassisted rate.) Harden in 2018-19 is already at 188, with almost half the season still to go. Speaking of the half-season …

4. Harden scored 50-plus points four times in his first 41 games. In the 2010s, there is only one other instance of a player scoring 50 in more than one such game in his first half of the season. It was Harden last season, when he tallied three.

More broadly, Harden’s mark ties the post–Wilt Chamberlain record. Since the mid-’60s, no player has more than four such games, but Harden’s four ties 2005-06 Kobe Bryant and 1988-89 Jordan for the most first-half explosions in the past half-century. Since Wilt, the most 50-point games in a full season is 10 from 2006-07 Bryant. Would anyone bet against Harden reaching that number at his current level?

5. Harden has remained as efficient as ever despite amplifying his volume to previously unseen levels.

Here is the progression of Harden’s 3-point percentage, dating back to his rookie season:

38 percent

35 percent

39 percent

37 percent

37 percent

37 percent

36 percent

35 percent

37 percent

38 percent

This consistency comes despite Harden’s 3-point attempts rising every season, from 3.3 per game as a rookie to 13.1 per game now. Efficiency typically doesn’t scale with volume, but Harden has experienced no letdown as his usage rate has climbed to near-record heights. And even within this season, Harden’s percentages haven’t suffered with greater responsibility or defensive attention: Starting with the December game in which Paul suffered his hamstring injury, Harden has attempted an unimaginable 16.6 3-pointers per game and maintained a 38 percent success rate on those tries.

By true shooting percentage, this is the second-most efficient scoring season of Harden’s career, behind only his last season with the Thunder, and his advantage stands out even further when compared to every previous player who amassed a 35 percent usage rate in a season. Well, compared to every previous player other than himself.

Efficiency Varies With a Large Volume

Player Season True Shooting Player Season True Shooting James Harden 2018-19 62.2% James Harden 2017-18 61.9% Bernard King 1984-85 58.5% Dwyane Wade 2008-09 57.4% Tracy McGrady 2002-03 56.4% DeMarcus Cousins 2016-17 56.2% George Gervin 1981-82 56.2% Michael Jordan 1986-87 56.2% Carmelo Anthony 2012-13 56.0% Kobe Bryant 2005-06 55.9% Russell Westbrook 2016-17 55.4% Kobe Bryant 2010-11 54.8% Allen Iverson 2005-06 54.3% DeMarcus Cousins 2015-16 53.8% Russell Westbrook 2014-15 53.6% Dominique Wilkins 1987-88 53.4% Kobe Bryant 2011-12 52.7% Jerry Stackhouse 2000-01 52.1% Allen Iverson 2000-01 51.8% Allen Iverson 2001-02 48.9% Allen Iverson 2003-04 47.8% Michael Jordan 2001-02 46.8%

Even homing in on the toughest shots, the situations when a player is most likely to force something at the hoop, Harden excels by measures of both volume and efficiency. He is finishing 6.1 possessions per game this season with the shot clock below four seconds, per Synergy tracking; Blake Griffin, at 4.4, is the only other player in the league with more than 3.5. Yet Harden also ranks in the 87th percentile in points per possession on such tries.

No matter the rules, no matter the situation, no matter the defensive strategy, no matter whether his teammates on the court are Austin Rivers and three auto-generated rookies from a future 2K draft class, Harden can’t stop scoring. The question of this Houston roster’s long-term feasibility remains, as Harden couples his offensive burden with the league lead in minutes per game, but it’s easy enough to enjoy this sustained explosion as it persists. In so many ways, Harden is playing—and succeeding—like nobody before him ever has.