James Harden wants out of Houston, if that wasn’t clear already. He seems to have his eyes set on contenders in the Eastern Conference. Yet, fans of those teams don’t want him? My only question to this is… Why?
The easy answer is the same narratives have been recited and recycled since he became a Rocket. I will not only attempt to show why those narratives are dumb and are only used by people who don’t really watch James Harden… But also justify the reason why team needs to trade for a motivated Harden.
Dumb Narratives
There are two main narratives that really bother me. Both show that people really don’t pay attention and seem to forget recent history.
Play Style
The first dumb narrative is Harden’s heavy-iso playstyle. The main thing I continue to see is “he can’t win a championship by just iso-ing all game” except he almost did. If you had watched any recent basketball, you would see the Rockets came within one game of making the NBA Finals in 2017. It took extreme circumstances that included playing the greatest team to ever play the game, losing your co-star for the final two games of the series, and have one of the biggest statistical anomalies in the history of the sport to barely lose that series. If they had just one thing go their way in the last two games they would be NBA Champions. Because if they can get by the Warriors, then they would get by the Cavaliers rather easily. So, saying he can’t do something when the thing he did was the closest thing that came to beating the greatest team ever is…ignorant.
This isn’t as talked about as much, but still an annoying thing to have to listen to. James Harden is capable of playing another style. In fact, he’s expressed interest in playing a different style. He wants to play in an offense that has more ball movement. He wants to play more off-ball. If you don’t believe him, then why would his short-list of teams include a team that has Kevin Durant on it? Or Giannis Antetokounmpo?
Defense
This is probably the first key I look for when trying to comb through the people who actually watch basketball as opposed to casual fans.
Look, I am not saying James Harden is a Defensive All-NBA player or anything like that. However, you really can’t say you have watched him play enough if you still think he’s a poor defender. He is around league average for his position–a position that doesn’t really focus on defense–and when he puts effort in he is actually good.
To really drive the point home, I will use metrics like Defensive Win Shares and Defensive Box Plus Minus between two Shooting Guards with their last four years of work.
Player A
Defensive Win Shares: 2.3, 1.8, 2.9, 2.6
Defensive Box Plus Minus: -1.4, -2.1, -1.6, -1.6
Player B
Defensive Win Shares: 3.2, 3.8, 3.8, 3.6
Defensive Box Plus Minus: 1.6, 1.6, 1.4, 1.2
I’m sure you are already guessing James Harden is “Player B” and you would be correct. But who is “Player A”? That player is in fact Klay Thompson. Someone is who is universally believed to one of the best defensive guards in the game. Yet, James Harden is better in these metrics. Does that mean I think James Harden is a better defender? No, because even these metrics can tell a lot they aren’t perfect and there are factors the player can’t control that could affect these numbers. However, this kind of shows how warped a person’s opinion can be when they believe certain narratives.
In addition, James Harden was not only statistically one of the best post-defenders among guards, he was better than most bigs. And it’s not like he was going against guards in the post either. He was playing on bigs thanks to the heavy-switch defense that featured no true center that Mike D’Antoni ran, and a lot of teams with the same lack of knowledge thought they could pick on Harden when actually he was actually the wrong target.
Trade For Harden If He Wants In
It’s no surprise that Harden wants to go to a contender. However, he seems to want to go to only contenders in the East, which is certainly an interesting dynamic. Those teams include the Heat, 76ers, Bucks, and Nets. Essentially he thinks those teams are one big piece away from winning a title and he is that big piece.
So why trade for him if your those teams? For one, no matter what you offer, you will never be able to emulate what Harden does on the court individually. Therefore, you win by default. With that being said, let’s talk about some of the common counters to why a James Harden trade would not be good.
Depth
Teams like the Heat might be afraid to make a trade for Harden because they will have to sacrifice their depth. With that I say look at the Warriors. They sacrificed all their depth for Kevin Durant and seemed like a pretty good deal. The Lakers sacrificed any potential depth and their future for Anthony Davis and that seemed like pretty good deal too. Seeing as how Harden is better than Davis this would be a smart move by the Heat.
Player Timeline
If you’re the 76ers you will probably have to give up Ben Simmons. The reason why is you don’t have forever to wait to see if Simmons and Embiid works out. Because Harden isn’t getting any younger and Embiid’s lower body isn’t getting any healthier. A Harden-Embiid duo also makes much more sense spacing and chemistry wise than a Harden-Simmons duo as well. Even though you can get more years out of Simmons and Embiid, we all can admit that Simmons will never be the player Harden is. Why not push the chips and actually have an all-time great player for a short time. Rather than having a pretty good player for a long time.
Culture
If you’re the Nets and Heat you’re you might say you don’t want to sacrifice your culture. With the Nets, how much culture is really left from that 2018 team? D’Angelo Russell is gone. Kenny Atkinson is gone. A lot of the role player who were culture guys are gone. So, what is really left? If you’re the Heat and you’re worried about losing culture guys like Duncan Robinson and Tyler Herro, trust me James Harden is better and his talent will supersede whatever value a culture player adds.
Fit
In general if you’re worried about fit, talent always finds a way to make it work. Unless there is injuries. There were a lot of questions about if Durant would work with Curry, Thompson, and Green. That was the best team of all time and only lost because Thompson and Durant weren’t healthy. Harden and Paul had questions. Harden and Westbrook had questions. Both seemed like good pairings until Westbrook and Paul suffered injuries. Paul was injured on and off throughout his last year with Houston, while Westbrook just suffered an injury at the wrong time and didn’t have time to get back into rhythm. So, fit really shouldn’t be a concern.
The Bucks
If you are the Bucks, you need to act like this is the last year Giannis will be a Buck, because it very well might be. They seem to think it is because they have been very active in the trade market getting Jrue Holiday and attempting to acquire Bogdan Bogdanovic. They want to do absolutely everything they can to keep Giannis. Adding Harden will certainly help. Because allowing guys like Holiday and Harden to handle the ball will allow Giannis to start playing like a big instead of having to create all the offense.
There is a scenario where allowing Giannis to run fast breaks and full-court sets and then let Harden handle the half-court sets seems like a lethal combination. In addition, throwing Holiday into the mix who is a great playmaker and defender makes them that much tougher to beat on paper.
And if you’re a team who is not the Bucks who has a chance at Harden, you don’t want that. So, getting Harden will not only benefit you just by having him, but also preventing the Bucks to have him will help because you just raise the chances that Giannis leaves in the off-season. I am sure that is no teams thought process, but that is the reality.
Conclusion
James Harden is a Top-5 player in the league. Arguably the greatest scorer to ever play the game. If he wants you, try to get him. Don’t let narratives ruin what could be a championship team.