Nylon Calculus: Could James Harden break Curry’s 3-point record?

We’re used to James Harden breaking statistical norms and this year he could pass Stephen Curry for the greatest 3-point shooting season ever.

As basketball has been remade in the modern era, we’ve become accustomed to absurd statistical outliers — triple-doubles becoming viable for a season-long average, 3-point records falling on a neverending basis, exploring new territory in the relationship between usage and efficiency. James Harden has been at the forefront of many of these statistical firsts and he could be on pace to take the single-season 3-point record from fellow avant-garde box score artist, Stephen Curry.

Harden has hit 68 3-pointers through his first 14 games. Only Curry has ever made more 3s in the first 14 games of a season, canning 71 both last season and in 2015-16. That puts Harden on a potentially historic pace, in position to challenge the single-season 3-point record Curry set in 2015-16.

Curry’s record-breaking effort was an unbelievable outlier — at that point, no one had ever even made 300 3-pointers in a single season. The next season, Curry’s total dropped to 324 as the Warriors worked to integrate Kevin Durant. Last year, he started at an even more prolific pace before an injury in early November cost him nearly a month.

After a slow start last season, Harden was actually near the pace of Curry’s record-setting season until missing a game in late February and then going 1-of-21 from beyond the arc in the first two games after he returned to the lineup. That alone should underscore how hard it will be for him to break the record. If Harden continued making 3s at his current rate, 4.9 per game, playing all 82 games would still put him just short of the record — 401.8. Missing a couple of games for rest or the kind of nagging injuries that accumulate over the course of a season could knock him right off.

However, Harden’s pace this season has mostly been driven by an increase in attempts and he’s only hit 34.0 percent from behind the arc so far, down from a career average of 36.4 percent. If he was hitting at his career average on this many attempts, he’d be on pace for about 427 3-pointers in 82 games, more than enough for him to rest a night or two and still break the record.

Harden has been slightly less accurate this season on both pull-ups and catch-and-shoot attempts but progression to the mean in both areas, and perhaps Russell Westbrook making sure a greater mix of Harden’s opportunities are catch-and-shoot attempts could be the difference.