Why has Harden not aged as well as his contemporaries?

[ardee]

Steph was basically as good as ever at age 35, only in his age 36 season (last year), did he finally start to decline, but he's still a top 10 guy.

Durant has had issues with team stability and some poor Playoff performances but he's also 36 and still a top player, hard to say he's lower than top 10.

LeBron is LeBron, nuff said.

CP3 in his age 36 season was still leading the league in assists, the MVP of a 64 win team and then had arguably his best Playoffs since 2008.

Harden meanwhile basically peaked in 2020 at his age 30 season, then left Houston and has gotten worse every year since. By age 32 he was basically just a standard All-Star and since then not even that. Obviously his volume is going to be down vs his Houston days after first playing with Durant, then Embiid and now Kawhi/PG, but you'd expect his efficiency to go up correspondingly, which it hasn't.

So why has he declined so fast? His game isn't as based on athleticism the way Westbrook's was.

I'm not saying he should still be 2018-2020 good, but surely you'd expect him to hold up nearly as well as Curry and Durant and even be a top 15 guy at least.

It doesn't make all that much sense to me honestly...

[AdagioPace]

despite being a great shooter his game was also predicated on being a train tunnelling through people. it was exactly the same, very demanding, couple moves he had.

[jalengreen]

He was still amazing in 2021 with Brooklyn. Then, injuries took their toll. That hamstring injury in the playoffs that he played thru, later on he had the Achilles injury in 2023. Often times older players decline via increased injury frequency.

Dribble drive penetration has always been a huge part of Harden's game, but in 2022 his ability to finish at the rim fell off a cliff.



He was still able to get to the rim (top chart), but rate at which he converted looks plummeted (bottom chart). Don't have an updated version of this graphic to see 2023 & 2024, but in Philly he noticeably had the same problem.

[EmpireFalls]

Fat

[bkkrh]

Big part is the D'Antoni effect. D'Antoni's offense heavily benefits scoring Point Guards and athletic Bigs. You can look up pretty much every player that falls into this category and played for him, they will always have their best career years with him.

He takes way less shots now. Last season he had 11.4 FGA, he had during his peak 2 seasons where he averaged more 3pt FGAs and 1 season where he had more FTAs than that. So of course his scoring average is a lot lower.

Also just to point out, it's not really an uncommon scenario. A lot of great players declined in their early 30ies, reasons ranging from declining athleticism, injuries, or just a change in playstyle in the league. You also need to consider that most players enter the league now at an age from 19-20, while until the end of the 90ies it was more common to stay 3-4 years in college. So a player that is 32 today will often have the same amount of NBA years than a 34-35 year old players in the past.

[falcolombardi]

Has he not? He was on his 15th season being the best player om the kawhi-less clippers in postseason

The year before he played a mixed bag series vs a great boston D where nevertheless he still won some games on his own

At most i think you could say he declined like maybe 1 yeear earlier than curry did and to a somewhat bigger degree

[Throwawaytheone]

.

[B-Mitch 30]

Minor nitpick but I think aging in your 30's/40's can affect your hand eye coordination.

[KingofTheClay]

He’s never really struck me as a winner.

Disappears in the playoffs, does goofy **** in the regular season like contest his own teammates shots, doesn’t seem to be very perceptive or have good self-awareness.

These things become more glaring as you age in the NBA.

And yeah he’s lost some foot speed and lost touch at the rim as other posters have said.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[tone wone]

Has he not? He was on his 15th season being the best player om the kawhi-less clippers in postseason

The year before he played a mixed bag series vs a great boston D where nevertheless he still won some games on his own

At most i think you could say he declined like maybe 1 yeear earlier than curry did and to a somewhat bigger degree

Threads like this are why Harden was so dissatisfied in Philly...that and them re-niging on paying him. He was pretty easily a top 12ish offensive player in 2023 and couldn't sniff all-nba. Why? Cause most people spent the entire time comparing him to past versions of himself. Wondering if he could still string together those explosive scoring runs.

[Cavsfansince84]

For starters, I don't think that Steph is anywhere close to 'as good as ever' at 35. Imo he's dropped off something like 15-20% since his 2021 rs. With Harden everyone knows about the injury/weight issues. Those go together to some degree because if you carry excess weight its harder on your knees/joints and to retain explosiveness. So no surprise at all that he's declining at his age. I think KD has also dropped off more than people realize. He's been getting by playing 40-60 games a year on teams where he's not even the clear #1 option since 2019.

[rk2023]

Combination of:

• Bad injury luck (namely the hamstring in 2021)
• Work ethic questions (seen by his partying in the offseason)
• Scoring game being too robotic and mechanical

One thing I can give Harden is that his passing skills are better than ever, and he’s mostly been consistent here since 2021. Being able to scale down and focus more on orchestration has still given him some clear + salavage value as he’s declined from the Isolation machine / regular season workhorse on offense. Either way, his “advantage creation” tactics were predicated on using his first steps and ability to separate to play right into the referee’s favors - which has declined more than anything due to all of the above.

[Doctor MJ]

Steph was basically as good as ever at age 35, only in his age 36 season (last year), did he finally start to decline, but he's still a top 10 guy.

Durant has had issues with team stability and some poor Playoff performances but he's also 36 and still a top player, hard to say he's lower than top 10.

LeBron is LeBron, nuff said.

CP3 in his age 36 season was still leading the league in assists, the MVP of a 64 win team and then had arguably his best Playoffs since 2008.

Harden meanwhile basically peaked in 2020 at his age 30 season, then left Houston and has gotten worse every year since. By age 32 he was basically just a standard All-Star and since then not even that. Obviously his volume is going to be down vs his Houston days after first playing with Durant, then Embiid and now Kawhi/PG, but you'd expect his efficiency to go up correspondingly, which it hasn't.

So why has he declined so fast? His game isn't as based on athleticism the way Westbrook's was.

I'm not saying he should still be 2018-2020 good, but surely you'd expect him to hold up nearly as well as Curry and Durant and even be a top 15 guy at least.

It doesn't make all that much sense to me honestly...

I actually think the biggest thing here is that he keeps forcing his way on to teams with existing alphas, and the way he became accustomed to playing Houston doesn’t work well in beta mode.

Had he stayed in and stayed committed, he’d probably still be an All-NBA candidate, to say nothing of the big fat super max contract he’d now be on.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Hair Jordan]

He doesn’t have Lebron’s PED supplier

[ShotCreator]

He was still amazing in 2021 with Brooklyn. Then, injuries took their toll. That hamstring injury in the playoffs that he played thru, later on he had the Achilles injury in 2023. Often times older players decline via increased injury frequency.

Dribble drive penetration has always been a huge part of Harden's game, but in 2022 his ability to finish at the rim fell off a cliff.



He was still able to get to the rim (top chart), but rate at which he converted looks plummeted (bottom chart). Don't have an updated version of this graphic to see 2023 & 2024, but in Philly he noticeably had the same problem.

Open and shut case. He was visibly and immediately toast after the hamstring injury.


His athleticism is really underrated and a huge part of his prime. He killed in the NBA combine.

[Dr Positivity]

He’s not exactly Lebron/Brady in terms of the physical conditioning

[Ol Roy]

Seems to me that his first step was a huge part of his rim attacks. Getting fat, injured, and old will grind down that ability.

[SlimShady83]

It's the Beard ... Need to shave the Beard

[f4p]

James Harden last year won more playoff games (2) than Lebron James, Steph Curry, Kevin Durant, Kawhi Leonard, and Chris Paul COMBINED (1). So the easy answer is even if harden fell off slightly earlier with the hamstring injury, you are definitely underrating the declines of the other players.

Like there's not really much argument that Steph or KD were any better than Harden last year. Their regular season box numbers are basically the same , their teams were worse (Steph didn't even make the playoffs with the highest payroll in the league), Hardens on/off was much better (Steph's was literally negative), and then harden upped all of his numbers in the playoffs even while playing all of his games against a very good Dallas defense, while KDs numbers except TS% all fell and Steph had a terrible play-in game (22/4/2 with 6 TOs) against a team that didn't even beat the Zion-less pelicans.

Only reputation is keeping those guys above harden at this point. As for their ages, harden is definitely falling off at a younger age than Steph but he also got better at a younger age. They were drafted the same year, broke out the same year (2013) and became MVP candidates the same year (2015). Hardens career path is basically just Steph's but shifted 2 years younger.

[McBubbles]

He doesn’t have Lebron’s PED supplier

How have you not been banned already.