James Harden, without a doubt, is way past his prime. Set to turn 35 years of age in a little over two months, Harden is looking to command one last big pay day that would most likely come from the Los Angeles Clippers. The memory of his prime is fading fast, but some of his former teammates, such as Trevor Ariza, are fighting hard not to let his standing as one of the best scorers to ever grace the NBA fade away. In fact, Ariza rates Harden even higher as a scorer than Los Angeles Lakers legend Kobe Bryant.

Speaking on Theo Pinson's Run Your Race podcast presented by Tidal League, Ariza regarded Harden as the best scorer he has ever played with, choosing his teammate with the Rockets over the man who led Ariza to the only championship of his NBA career in 2009 with the Lakers.

“For sure, James [is the best scorer I ever played with]. He figured out how to score the basketball. That run he went on… that's f**king nuts,” Ariza said. “The s**t he was doing just crazy. Being on the court sometimes you'd kinda like fall asleep just watching like, ‘Damn, he really did that?”

There was definitely a point in James Harden's career where he was simply unstoppable for the Rockets. During the 18-19 season, Harden put the Rockets on his back with one electric scoring performance after another, reaching an unparalleled level of scoring dominance. At one point, he even scored 30 points or more on 32 consecutive games, which is good for the second-longest 30-plus-point streak in NBA history.

During that aforementioned season, he ended up averaging 36.1 points per game, doing his damage mostly on stepbacks, free throws, and fearless drives to the hoop. That was the best of a three-year stretch where Harden was one of the top-five best players in the association, with the Rockets legitimately mounting a championship push in 2018.

In terms of scoring prowess, it's hard to argue against the prime version of James Harden. Trevor Ariza is definitely justified in his opinion. Harden was the driving force of the Rockets' high-octane offense to end the 2010s, commandeering the team's pace-and-space offense in 2018, dominating with the team's isolation style in 2019, and making the most of the team's brazen five-out roster in 2020.

But it's important to note that Kobe Bryant also went on a similar scoring tear, and during an era with worse spacing and fewer three-point attempts, when the Lakers underwent a transition period in the mid-2000s.

Don't discount the Lakers legend

During the 2005-06 season, Kobe Bryant entered a different scoring stratosphere as the Lakers needed him to take control of the team's offense after Bryant and Shaquille O'Neal had fallen apart. Bryant averaged 27.2 shot attempts per game as he went on to put up 35.6 points per night — carrying the Lakers on his back en route to a 45-37 season, which was good for the seven-seed in the Western Conference.

Bryant had 56 games with over 30 points during that season; Harden had 57 such games during his historic 18-19 campaign. Most importantly, Bryant scored 81 points on January 22, 2006, which still stands as the second-highest scoring single-game performance in NBA history.

At his peak, Bryant was an unstoppable three-level scoring force; he blended an unmatched ferocity when driving to the basket with an incredible ability to make difficult shots against multiple defenders. His famous mentality also allowed him to stay the course, continuing to stay aggressive even on nights when his shots would clank off the rim more often than not.

The knock on the Lakers star is that he wasn't exactly the most efficient scorer. But for the time, the volume Bryant scored in with his efficiency made him one of the best scorers in the association nonetheless.

As Bryant got older, he became an even greater master of the midrange, much like the player he looked up to the most in Michael Jordan. This high-level difficult shot-making ability allowed Bryant to be an assassin in the clutch, and more often than not, he showed out for the Lakers when they needed him the most.

This is where Bryant separates himself as a scorer. When the going got rough, the Lakers legend was still able to make things happen for his team. James Harden, meanwhile, was more subject to variance due to his shot diet. As a pure scorer, Harden was able to stretch defenses beyond belief with his incredible one-on-one deep shot-making ability, but Bryant's skillset was more suited to maintaining a consistent level of play in bogged-down postseason settings.