3/23/15: You Don’t Gotta, Gotta, Gotta, Gotta, Got to Love James Harden, But…
Basketball players are usually a step behind when it comes to style. Sure, Clyde Frazier was able to keep up in the 70’s, but as much as Russell Westbrook wants to frame his All-Star Game MVP experience as I got to go to Fashion Week! Oh, and the game was fun, Russ isn’t a runway model; he’s a basketball player with money to blow on clothes. With his every move chronicled by khaki-clad, middle-aged men festooned with lanyards, his peers rocking tear-away pants and Jordans, Westbrook’s chunky frames and Thriller extra ensembles are going to get some ink.
Recent years have brought about a red carpet rebirth of the beard, perhaps its strongest since the heyday of Barry Gibb and Kenny Rogers. Oklahoma City Thunder (now Houston Rockets) guard James Harden wasn’t the first famous guy to grow an ambitious beard. He wasn’t nearly the first athlete of the millennium to capitalize on a set of impressive follicles (baseball player Johnny Damon milked that cow, as have Brian Wilson and a host of others). But as his team traveled to the 2012 NBA Finals, Harden’s star began to rise, with the beard getting the assist. And while he toiled for the gold medal-winning U.S. Olympic squad in London, Harden’s facial hair got its own Twitter account and flirted with Madison Avenue.
Which happened to coincide with the wing (and his beard) snatching the keys to the car in Houston. Freed from the constraints playing in an offensive system with Russell Westbrook and Kevin Durant swallowing 40 shots a night, Harden ran wild and experienced a career year in 2012–13 following a trade to the Rockets.
But with every ascent comes eventual backlash. When Houston signed shot eraser Dwight Howard, Harden took it a little easy on defense. Which, unfortunately for him, became a meme. Despite a line of 25 points, six assists and five rebounds per game, Harden’s 2013–14 campaign was (perhaps unfairly) summed up by this:
In case you missed his contribution to the play, that’s Harden in the lower left corner.
Never did we think that guy would be a front runner for the 2014–15 NBA MVP Award. Indeed, our Knuckle Pushups preseason podcast submitted Steph Curry as the logical choice, Anthony Davis as a sleeper, and Durant’s injury as a major reason why the trophy wouldn’t be his for the second consecutive year.
Then, this happened:
Through 55 games, Harden not only leads the NBA in scoring; he’s pacing The Association in lots of things. His usage is through the roof. PER is at a career high. His defense is back (two thefts a night, coupled with improved awareness). His team is third in the West (despite co-conspirator Howard missing 23 games due to injury). He put up a 26–8–8 line in the All-Star Game. He’s playing like a man possessed.
And yet, to the purist, Harden’s game is just as gross as the six inches of fuzz jutting out from his face.
I’ll quote myself from our “Why We Watch” Awards piece: “his style of play offends the sensibilities of those who think basketball is inherently a beautiful game…all threes, Dwyane Wade flops and free throws.” Which is exactly what MIT-bred Rockets GM Daryl Morey wants. For years, we’ve heard about Morey’s crusade to exploit the inefficiencies of basketball. Harden is both his muse and bearded hitman.
Harden is the ball-dominant guard, careening into the lane and getting to the line. He’s made an astonishing 30% more free throws than the next-closest player in the league. He’s the guy camped out by the three-point line, prepared to launch. The obsessed distributor, whipping the ball around to find the best shot. As Grantland’s Kirk Goldsberry notes, when you combine made three-point shots and three-pointers assisted, Harden easily leads the league. He has a particular knack for finding shooters in the corner, which is right up Morey’s alley.
It’s just…meh. The Rockets viewing experience borders on watching college basketball, where coaches are forced to rely on offensive strategies that yield predictable results simply because their rosters are stacked with one-dimensional players. This is the NBA, where Harden is both acrobat and jack-of-all-trades, yet we’re forced to accept the icky aesthetics of a guy who spends the majority of his time on the floor toeing the line (whether free-throw or three-point) and encouraging his teammates to do the same.
Goldsberry knows how I feel about this:
For those of us who grew up watching Bird, Magic, and Jordan, there’s an increasing dissonance between what we perceive to be dominant basketball and what actually is dominant basketball. Sometimes the two are aligned, but they seem to be increasingly divergent — and perhaps the most tragic analytical realization is that the league’s rapidly growing 3-point economy has inherently downgraded some of the sport’s most aesthetically beautiful skill sets. You can’t be Bernard King or Alex English, bobbing and weaving into space on the elbow or along the baseline, anymore. Hell, it’s hard to even be LaMarcus Aldridge or Al Jefferson. The Chris Boshes and Serge Ibakas of the world, once forever camped out in the post, now stray beyond the arc. That unassuming curved line has forever changed the NBA. For every graying Garnett, Duncan, or Kobe, lugging their 2-point jumpers toward the exit, there’s an upstart Harden or Love hanging out behind the 3-point line.
We can either lament this development (and I’ve spent plenty of time and wind on it), or get comfortable with the idea of James Harden as 2014–15 NBA MVP. While the beard isn’t exactly a one-man revolution, Harden’s game is the future. And with nearly every team heavily invested in the NBA’s statistical revolution, we’ve turned the corner. That corner may be the NBA-Going-To-Hell-Curve, but the vehicle is in “drive.” Bird, Magic, even Allen Iverson may as well be George Mikan.
And in the new NBA, James Harden is a step ahead (of even Russell Westbrook) when it comes to style.
This post was originally published to TheDropStep.com on March 23, 2015.
