The Mystique of the Ball-Dominant Score-First Guards
Friday morning came, and the milkman delivered the goods, but the bottles looked different this time. The side of each carton donned a face that was 75 percent facial hair, and 25 percent the eyes of a pudgy, uniquely athletic, brilliant, frustrating, mesmerizing, and holistically perplexing guard.
Gone missing.
After the San Antonio Spurs’ emphatic dismissal of the Houston Rockets — a game in which MVP candidate Kawhi Leonard was notably more valuable than fellow candidate James Harden, despite the fact that the former sat out with an injury — the curtains officially closed on the two most polarizing characters of the year, the actors who most illustriously defined the show that was the 2016–17 NBA season. Act One saw the ousting of Russell Westbrook — at the hands of Harden, no less — only for the most famous beard in sports to suffer the same fate in Act Two. The other four no-doubt superstars survived to play out the penultimate act, but the audience feels hollow as they mingle back to their seats. Are those two leading roles really gone? Is their part in the story really over, so soon?
For months, every comprehensive NBA article — every season summary, every awards column, every prediction thread — has been graced by the quintessential faces of Westbrook and Harden: the angry, determined mug of Westbrook, sweat beading down his temples, forking towards his nose like morning dew on a window; and the slightly amused, almost jovial half-smirk of Harden, barely visible beneath the deep recesses of his beard. LeBron has been dominant; Kawhi has been transcendent; Curry and Durant have been quietly magical; yet the season was always defined by Russell Westbrook and James Harden.
And now they’re gone.
It was oddly poetic, the way the season ended for these two. Linked at the hip for their excessive and pseudo-psychotic statlines, Westbrook ceded to Harden’s better team, and then Harden fizzled slowly, pathetically, anti-climactically, like the last bottle of Coke you’ve been saving, that you now realize had long ago been opened. A triple-double average from Westbrook. An unthinkable 29.1 points and 11.2 assists from Harden. Gone on 2–11 shooting. Gone on 10 points, 7 assists, and 6 turnovers. Gone when the sixth foul officially checked him out, three hours after he unofficially had.
When the MVP is announced at the end of the season, Westbrook and Harden will almost surely be the top two vote-getters, yet they’ll also be long-settled into their offseason vacations. And we’ll be left to answer the critical questions that these two dynamic guards silently posed for us: how good can they be? And, how good can their teams be?
It’s easy to not like Westbrook and Harden. Westbrook, at times, plays like a semi barreling down the interstate at 120 MPH — a force of nature so physically imposing and unusual that you cannot look away, cannot help being compelled, but never feel particularly comfortable with. Efficient, smart, valuable? When it works, yes, but how often is that? And can you rely on that when the road conditions are icy and the traffic is thick?
Harden, on the other hand, plays with a pulchritude matched only by a drunken frat boy riding a longboard for the first time. His efficacy is predicated on a historic ability to draw fouls, a characteristic highlighted by limbs flailing in a manner that can only be described as equal parts interpretive dancing, and capoeira. Efficient? Absolutely. Elegant? Hardly.
Fans of the ballet-esque grace that has so often defined basketball like these players little. Fans who think that gaudy stats always correlate with prioritizing individual results over team results like these players even less. Westbrook averaged only 2 fewer rebounds per game than his frontcourt — combined — leading many to believe he was stat-hunting, a belief that 42 triple-doubles did little to assuage. Harden wasn’t far behind.
And yet the reality is that, in a loaded Western Conference, a team whose second-best player was Steven Adams grabbed the sixth seed; and a team whose second-best player was . . . Eric Gordon? Trevor Ariza? Ryan Anderson? won 55 games, and had the third-best net rating in the league.
With Westbrook on the bench, the Oklahoma City Thunder were outscored by 8.3 points per 100 possessions, a mark that would have been worst in the league, by a large margin. Without Harden, the Rockets outscored their opponents, but were 6.9 points per possession worse than when Harden was on the court. Of course, the quality of backups plays a role in these numbers, but not enough to eliminate their merit: the Thunder and the Rockets were dramatically, incontrovertibly better when their respective stars played.
The goal for an NBA team — especially one with a certified star — is to win a championship. It goes without saying that you can’t do so without a good team. A starting lineup containing Victor Oladipo, Andre Roberson, Taj Gibson, and Steven Adams won’t get you far; a lineup with Patrick Beverley, Trevor Ariza, Ryan Anderson, and Clint Capela will get you closer, but not too close. You need good players — very good players, and you need more than one. A team needs not only a benchmark “best player on a championship team”, but a second and third-best player on a championship team, as well.
The debate with Harden and Westbrook isn’t about whether they can be that best player. It’s about whether it’s possible to pair them with a second and third-best player, and still get the full impact.
The most obvious data point is the Thunder of years past, when Westbrook was paired with another “best player on a championship team”. And while that team had success — making the NBA Finals one year, and pushing the historically great Golden State Warriors to the brink another — they never truly maximized their abilities. At best, they were a team with one superstar — the name on the back of the superstar’s jersey simply alternated between “Westbrook” and “Durant”.
When Durant decided to swap pastures — a move that many speculated was related to an inability to play alongside Westbrook — his former point guard responded by having the best season of his career. The narrative is that Westbrook was out for revenge, to prove to his teammates (present and former), the league, and the fans that he didn’t need an all-time great by his side. It’s hard to argue this narrative: it’s fun, compelling, gripping. But fiction can be all those things, and fact — sometimes, though not always — is less heroic. Westbrook did, indeed, have the best season of his career, because he no longer had to defer, share, or compromise. He could play his brand of basketball, every possession, no questions asked.
Well, almost no questions asked.
Still, the question remains: how good can a team led by Russell Westbrook or James Harden be?
A ball-dominant, score-first point guard inherently provides problems: if a player needs the ball in his hands most of the time, and the bulk of those possessions end in him shooting, where do you find a star companion? What star player can complement that specific filter? What star player doesn’t need the ball in their hands, as an offensive focal point, to still be at their most effective? Rudy Gobert and Draymond Green, likely. But the list ends there.
Championship teams not only have numerous stars; they have stars whose whole is greater than the sum of their parts. When Stephen Curry has the ball in his hands, Durant and Klay Thompson draw so much attention due to their shooting abilities (and Thompson’s stellar off-ball movement), that the defense is impacted. None of Golden State’s three super scorers need the ball in their hands to positively affect the offense. During the zenith of the Big Three Heat, James and Dwyane Wade were the two greatest off-ball cutters in the league; give the ball to one, and the other was still an equally dangerous threat.
Harden and Westbrook provide little such value. Neither player is a good long-range shooter: Harden shot just 33.8% from deep this year, with Westbrook at a mildly-better 34.3%. A defense conceding a Westbrook triple is allowing OKC to score 102.9 points per 100 possessions, a mark that would have been 27th in the league. Allowing Harden to shoot from range equated to 101.4 points per 100 possessions, which would have given Houston the 29th-best offense.
Translation: defenses are more than happy to see either star shoot from beyond the arc. When a role player has the ball, defenses don’t need to play honestly on Harden and Westbrook; they can begin to sag off.
They don’t make up for it with their cutting ability, either, despite Westbrook’s alien athleticism and Harden’s magical orchestration around the rim. This year Westbrook scored 389 baskets within 10 feet of the rim, but just 53 of them were assisted — a mere 13.6%. Harden was even worse, with just 42 of his 381 such makes assisted — a rate of only 11.0%.
Compare those numbers to other stars, and the problems are highlighted in first-day-of-school yellow ink. This year James scored a whopping 569 baskets within 10 feet of the rim, and 40.2% were assisted. Curry shot 41.1% from downtown, despite a higher level of difficulty on his attempts than Westbrook or Harden. On and on down the list of stars, you’ll find it’s true: the best players are still providing value when the ball is in someone else’s hands.
On Thursday, it all came to an explosive conclusion, as if John Wooden and Tex Winter had conducted the game with marionette strings, to prove a point about team-oriented basketball. The Rockets, so offensively unstoppable all year, were halted in their tracks, and the dominoes fell, methodically, predictably, in order. The Spurs gave Harden openings 30-feet away, and he knew he couldn’t make them pay. San Antonio sagged off of screens, taking away Harden’s ability to get a foul call at will. The first arrow hit Harden’s isolation offense squarely on the target, but the Spurs didn’t even need a secondary shot; Houston provided it themselves. Harden gave the ball to teammates, and San Antonio forgot the bearded MVP candidate even existed. Just like that, the Rockets were a team of slightly-above average role players, playing mediocre basketball with no star outlet. With the ball in the hands of Gordon, Ariza, Anderson, and Lou Williams, the Spurs treated Harden as though he were just another replacement-level wing. Nothing to see here; nothing to worry about.
It worked.
The narrative, this year, was simple: Russell Westbrook and James Harden are dynamic superstars, surrounded by mediocre talent. The excuse was tailor-made: can’t win with average role players.
But can they win with above-average ones? Can you maximize the talents of numerous star players, when one of them needs the ball in his hands to be effective? When they provide as little value off-ball as they do defensively? When a secondary star can only serve the role of rotating who wears the cape, rather than creating a two-headed monster, impossible to defend? The Rockets got better when they got rid of Dwight Howard and promoted Capela; that should tell you something.
It’s the question that likely makes Daryl Morey squirm. The progressive GM of the Rockets knows this: he has to improve his team this offseason. But he’s surely asking this: how? Beverley, a three-and-D guard, is the perfect backcourt companion for Harden. Ariza, a three-and-D wing, is the ideal small forward for Harden. Capela, a pick-and-roll-and-D center, is right out of the Harden mold. Replace Anderson with a more athletic, defensively-adept version, and you have the dream roster around Harden.
A roster that will, on a good year, flame out in the Conference Finals.
I chose Westbrook as my MVP; Harden was second. And yet, if drafting a team to win next year, with a championship in mind, I’d take James, Leonard, Curry, or Durant over Westbrook and Harden, without thinking. I’d take Chris Paul and Joel Embiid, health permitting. I’d take Anthony Davis, Jimmy Butler, and Giannis Antetokounmpo. I’d probably take Draymond Green and Rudy Gobert; perhaps Paul George and Gordon Hayward.
Put the ball in the hands of a ball-dominant, score-first guard, and you’ll do very well. Take the ball out — by choice, by chance, or by force of the defense — and you’ll fail. For as long as that remains true, we’ll see the same results out of Oklahoma City and Houston: lavish, borderline ostentatious stats; a record that will impress when the supporting cast is mediocre; and a result that will disappoint, if the supporting cast ever is not.
