The Houston Rockets have been arguably the hottest team in the NBA over the last month.
The biggest driving force behind that success has been the play of James Harden, who scored 44 points in Thursday's 135-134 win over the Golden State Warriors, including the game-winning 3 in overtime. On Friday, BetDSI revealed their latest odds for the league's MVP Award and Harden (+250) has overtaken Milwaukee Bucks forward Giannis Antetokounmpo as the favorite.
Antetokounmpo was the MVP favorite just one week ago with +350 odds with Harden sitting in second place at +450. Harden has not only jumped ahead of Giannis, he's even managed to cut his odds nearly in half after being +1000 at the beginning of December.
It certainly hasn't hurt that Harden is playing the best basketball of his career and the Rockets continue to rise up the standings. Houston has won 11 of its last 12 games and is currently riding a six-game winning streak after defeating the defending champions.
During the team's six-game winning streak, Harden has put together averages of 42.2 points and 9.5 assists while shooting 41.9 percent from beyond the arc. In their latest win over Golden State, Harden knocked down 10 threes on 23 attempts, which is the most that he's hit throughout the 2018-19 season so far.
Harden has been nearly unguardable over the past several weeks and scored at least 41 points in each of Houston's last five games.
The Rockets guard has been scoring at a historic pace as of late and he's been able to do all of this without Chris Paul in the lineup. The team had been extremely inconsistent out of the gate, but has caught fire as they continue to climb the standings.
If Harden, whose Rockets return to action on Saturday against the Blazers (10 p.m. ET -- watch on fuboTV with the NBA League Pass extension), continues at this pace throughout the season, it's certainly going to be an MVP race for the ages.
