The one knock on Harden is that his career 36.3% from three is the lowest among the top five leaders — Allen reached 2,973 threes at nearly 700 fewer attempts, Curry is a career 42.6% shooter and Miller converted 39.5 percent of his 6,486 attempts from deep.
As such, some may deem Harden’s record a longevity stat, especially since his made threes per game have dropped significantly in recent years. Harden made 3.7 threes per game during his MVP season in 2017-18 and followed that with 4.8 in 2018-19 and 4.4 in 2019-20. This season, he’s making only 2.5 threes per game, which ranks 38th in the league.
However, Harden doesn’t view his accomplishment in that light.
“Unbelievable accomplishment,” Harden said of moving past Allen, via ESPN’s Ohm Youngmisuk. “Just a testament to the amount of work that I’ve been putting in. As I get older and just chip away at an unbelievable career, [I] start to accomplish things like that. So I don’t ever want to take it for granted. I just want to give motivation to the youth and every other person that’s chasing a dream to play professional basketball or whatever it is. So it’s an honor.”
Harden is the first to admit that he’ll never catch up to Curry, who had made 807 more threes from only 691 more attempts as of Monday.
“I’m one of the most confident guys that we have in this league. But no, I probably won’t catch Steph. And I don’t think anybody will honestly,” he declared.
Among active players, Curry, Harden and Lillard are at the top, followed by Klay Thompson (2,523), LeBron James (2,441) and Paul George (2,267). While it’s hard to foresee anyone breaking Curry’s record, the math says a player could eventually come close due to the number of threes attempted in the modern NBA. For context, the Celtics are attempting 51.1 threes per game this season, the most in NBA history. They have upped their attempts by nine from last season.
