Post#43 » by tsherkin » Thu Jan 5, 2012 9:52 pm
FWIW, by the way bast:
Harden is 5/13 on those spot up plays and 2/5 on plays off of screens. He's 2/5 on 3s from hand-offs. Where he's really getting smoked is that he's 1/5 in transition, 0/4 as the handler in the pick-and-roll and he's 0/2 on 3s out of isolations.
That's this season, but what it points to is that generally when Harden gets his feet set, the three goes but if he's trying to take one without that chance, he's been quite ineffective, going 1/11 and thus contributing to his overall weak performance.
That trend is somewhat born out last year, though on higher overall percentages. He was clearly weakest on 3s taken in transition (12/49) and then his two best sets were off of screens (38.3%) and from hand-offs (41.7%). He shot 35.9% on 181 spot-up attempts.
He performed better from 3 in isolations last year, 14/38, or 36.8% and again evidenced one of his lower efficiencies as a 3pt shooter out of the pick-and-roll (14/43, 32.6%).
So there's some loose correlation between the basic ideas of this season and last year; he doesn't shoot as well in transition or in the PnR, at least from 3 and by far, transition plays are his most efficient plays (not that really that should be news or anything).
In any case, as I've never denied, he's an effective scorer (which is all I've been discussing, since his passing is obvious) out of the PnR. About the same this year as last. It still represents about a quarter of his possessions. Around as much, actually, as his spot-up opportunities (~ 2% more). Interestingly enough, in terms of volume of FGAs for Harden, last year it went 1) Spot-Up 2) Pick-and-Roll 3) Transition.
I imagine some of this distribution is due to the nature of his role; it'd be interesting to see what happened if the Thunder played Harden alongside Maynor, Durant and Ibaka more often, IMO, given how successful those lineups have been.