iggymcfrack wrote:tsherkin wrote:iggymcfrack wrote:It’s not just not winning a title though. It’s consistently underperforming when it matters most. Chris Paul never won a title, but he’s consistently played very well in the playoffs in big moments. I have Chris Paul #11 all-time, but I still can’t get there with Harden as even a top 35 guy.
I think it's really hard to ignore the full measure of his regular season performances to drop him that far down. He certainly has playoff issues because he relies so hard on "rim or 3" in tandem with his FTAs. But like David Robinson, he still draws just fine come the playoffs, he just can't do enough work elsewhere to really dominate. Passes well enough still, though not quite as effectively. He was a 28/6/7 guy on 57.8% TS and +6.1 OBPM in the playoffs, remember. Worse than his RS player, but still very good (again allowing for the limitations of OBPM). He's been worse in the three postseasons he's played in since, but that's hardly a fair reason to bring him down, is it? In his 30s, injured, crap team contexts...
Just looking at PER for a quick and dirty comparison, his playoff numbers have been worse than his regular season numbers in 11 of the last 12 seasons, often much lower.
lots of people's PER goes down in the playoffs.
in harden's age 23-31 prime, which was from his 1st season in houston through his 1st season in brooklyn, here are his all-time playoffs rankings (comparing everyone from 23-31 to go apples to apples):
PER: 23rd (notable nearby 21. Big O, 22. David Robinson, 24. Elgin Baylor, 25, Jerry West)
WS48: 35th (notable nearby 33. Manu Ginobili, 34. Larry Bird, 38. Moses Malone, 43. Kevin Garnett)
BPM: 11th (notable nearby 9. Chris Paul, 10. Magic Johnson, 13. Tim Duncan, 14. Larry Bird)
now maybe these are just magic stats that consistently rank all of the other great players really high and then just accidentally rank james harden very high, but his average ranking in those stats is 23rd. and that's purely playoffs, where he is supposedly so terrible.
we can safely say he's passed his prime after 2021 so maybe if you wanted to start make a longevity argument against him, that might make some sense, but his quality of play is still very high in the playoffs in his prime. in addition to never blowing a 2-0 or 3-1 lead, hardly ever losing as a favorite, and probably being closer to a deserved championship than any other "no rings" guy in history (ATG opponent, game 7, injured teammate possibly causing the loss is closer than barkley, karl malone, david robinson, patrick ewing ever got).
and then of course stuff like having the 12th most regular season MVP shares. doesn't seem like a guy struggling to get into the top 35.
He's famously had his worst games in the most high-leverage spots too, memorably completely disappearing in several do-or-die Game 6s.
lol, no he hasn't. if anything, his worst moments have been in lower leverage moments that had no impact on winning a title. he had bad series in 2013 on an 8th seed that was never going to do anything and 2014 on a 4th seed that was never going to do anything. he had a very good 2015 playoffs and yet only gets remembered for clippers game 6, which only became "high leverage" when josh smith and corey brewer randomly both turned into reggie miller and warriors game 5 with the 12 turnovers. the 12 turnovers thing is probably the most galling way harden gets overlooked.
in the first 4 games of the series, harden had a:
29/11/9 game on 55% shooting
a 39/10/9 game on 62% shooting (top 30 game score for the entire decade in the playoffs) and was +12 in 41 minutes and yet still lost because his team was -13 in the 7 minutes he was off the court
a 45/9/5 game on 59% shooting (an even higher top 30 game score)
32/8/7 on 66% TS all against the #1 defense in the first 4 games. as well as you can possibly play. way better than lebron looked on offense against the same defense just one series later. and yet harden's team was down 3-1, even losing one of the top 30 game score games, showing it was basically impossible that the rockets were going to win. but somehow game 5 was this "high leverage", all important game that sank our season. please.
game 6 against the spurs in 2017 was all-time bad and he didn't show up, but all it did was prevent a game 7 in san antonio with kawhi, and even if we won that, it prevented an obliteration against the 2017 warriors.
after that? hard to complain about much from 2018 to 2021. you're a warriors fan. if james harden is so terrible, why couldn't the most loaded team ever not beat him easily? why did it arguably take an injury to save the mighty warriors from choker james harden? it's not like chris paul's 20/6 on 52% TS was devastating y'all in 2018. it's not like cp3's horrible performance in 2019 was what saved the rockets (it was harden massively outplaying steph through the first 5 games).
from 2018 to 2021, the 4 years (well, 3 years if you don't count 2020) where he had his best teams and the best chance to win, he played 8 series until the hamstring injury? in those 8 series? he led both teams in game score 7 out of 8 series. that's 2 series with steph, 3 with KD, one with lebron and AD, one with jimmy butler, 2 with donovan mitchell, 5 with CP3 and one with kyrie.
how rare is leading 7 out of 8? well, i don't know, but i'd like to look it up at some point. but i do know that the only people to lead even 60% of their career series are lebron and jordan, so 7 out of 8 is likely something very few people, even top 10 all-time guys, have done in their careers. and before i hear game score doesn't matter, pretty much the entire list of people who have led 35+% of their series is just the all-time top 10 guys who have played since game score became a stat. again, another weird stat that says all the best players are all the best players and then also says harden is pretty good. so his best years in the playoffs were the years he had his best teams (i.e. the most important years to be good) and gave arguably the greatest team ever its 2 best series.
It's not about what he did in his 30s. In his 30s, he's actually managed to more closely approximate his regular season production.
mmm, not the last 2 years.
It's everything from the 2012 Finals where he averaged 12/5/4 all the way through the 2018 Western Conference Finals when up 3-2, one win away from history, he went 6/25 from three with 14 turnovers in the final two games.
lol. you warriors fans sure are proud of somehow digging down deep and beating harden alone with only 4 hall of famers in their prime. legendary stuff. harden also averaged 32/8.5/6.5 in games 6 and 7 against the #1 defense in the playoffs, with no 2nd option to take away any attention, even putting up 31/9/7 in a game where his team scored 86 points because everyone else bricked everything (reminds me of jordan somehow putting up 31/9/8 in a 74 point game 7 against the pistons). yes, it's a lot of turnovers, but 32/8.5/6.5 with low turnovers against the #1 defense in the playoffs isn't the standard for being top 35. it's the standard for being in the GOAT conversation.
His entire athletic prime, he choked whenever he had the chance to actually accomplish something, probably worse than any superstar in history.
like getting to the next round to get shellacked in 2013 or 2017? because he mostly played really well (at least as well as anyone else in his series) when his teams were actual contenders.
