[Thinking Basketball] #277: The best iso scorers of the Pace & Space Era

[RCM88x]

FWIW, the results here vary a decent bit based on what minimum GP threshold you put on it because Dame, Shai, Kawhi have 3 yr spans in which they played <15 playoff games and were really efficient. I thought 20 GP was reasonable but completely arbitrary.

Each player's best (by PPP) three year PS span from 2016 thru 2024 (min. 20 GP):



(same thing with a 10 GP minimum; I think that's too low but in case anyone's interested in Shai's run this year, for example):

Spoiler:

LeBron being at the top of this is laughable lmao

Not that surprising to me. LeBron over the last few seasons has been almost surgical in how he attacks mismatches.

Well sure, but he's like 8-9-10 years older than everyone else on the list and was "injured" for most of those games.

[NBA4Lyfe]

Isolations tracked since 2015

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[cupcakesnake]

I think Harden is clearly the best iso player in the modern era, especially if you care about volume. That 2019 Rockets team, when they stopped setting screens and spammed Harden iso... we've never seen anything like that.

However, if I needed to theoretically close a game with 10 straight iso possessions against the other team's best defender, I would choose Kawhi Leonard and not seriously consider James Harden. James Harden has some stubbornly wretched decision making ability. If you sit on Harden's counters, he'll try to do them any way. He was an unstoppable force but the reason his resiliency is poor is because he didn't like to adjust to what the defense was doing. I'd take Kawhi, Luka, and Shai (and yeah probably Jokic too) in this regard so I think I understand the criteria Elgee was into.

I love Harden's raw iso power but don't love his decision making with the game on the line.

[mattg]

I think Harden is clearly the best iso player in the modern era, especially if you care about volume. That 2019 Rockets team, when they stopped setting screens and spammed Harden iso... we've never seen anything like that.

However, if I needed to theoretically close a game with 10 straight iso possessions against the other team's best defender, I would choose Kawhi Leonard and not seriously consider James Harden. James Harden has some stubbornly wretched decision making ability. If you sit on Harden's counters, he'll try to do them any way. He was an unstoppable force but the reason his resiliency is poor is because he didn't like to adjust to what the defense was doing. I'd take Kawhi, Luka, and Shai (and yeah probably Jokic too) in this regard so I think I understand the criteria Elgee was into.

I love Harden's raw iso power but don't love his decision making with the game on the line.

Harden is somewhat fortunate that only Eric Bledsoe figured out the "guard Harden's back left side" thing and that it only happened at the end of Harden's prime, because completely taking away the step back utterly destroyed James in those games. It set up literally every single thing he did on the court with the threat to step back and when he couldn't he looked LOST. He was taking awful floaters he never even considered and also it messed up his passing ability. Granted I'm not sure any other on ball defenders in the entire league had that ability to do what Bledsoe was doing in that time...but had every team gotten more time to break down the tape who knows what we would have seen had that strategy emerged in like 2017 for example.

[cupcakesnake]

I think Harden is clearly the best iso player in the modern era, especially if you care about volume. That 2019 Rockets team, when they stopped setting screens and spammed Harden iso... we've never seen anything like that.

However, if I needed to theoretically close a game with 10 straight iso possessions against the other team's best defender, I would choose Kawhi Leonard and not seriously consider James Harden. James Harden has some stubbornly wretched decision making ability. If you sit on Harden's counters, he'll try to do them any way. He was an unstoppable force but the reason his resiliency is poor is because he didn't like to adjust to what the defense was doing. I'd take Kawhi, Luka, and Shai (and yeah probably Jokic too) in this regard so I think I understand the criteria Elgee was into.

I love Harden's raw iso power but don't love his decision making with the game on the line.

Harden is somewhat fortunate that only Eric Bledsoe figured out the "guard Harden's back left side" thing and that it only happened at the end of Harden's prime, because completely taking away the step back utterly destroyed James in those games. It set up literally every single thing he did on the court with the threat to step back and when he couldn't he looked LOST. He was taking awful floaters he never even considered and also it messed up his passing ability. Granted I'm not sure any other on ball defenders in the entire league had that ability to do what Bledsoe was doing in that time...but had every team gotten more time to break down the tape who knows what we would have seen had that strategy emerged in like 2017 for example.

I agree, but also that only worked because of Harden's strange stubbornness to only take certain kinds of shot. Anyone else if you guarded them from behind... they'd just walk into wide open pull ups and draw fouls if the defense was over aggressive. Harden having such a rigid hierarchy of desired shots made him incapable of reading the defense and punishing them for the ridiculous stuff he was forcing defenses into.

It's to his credit that he caused defenses to do the most hilarious things. Defend from behind! Defend without arms! But that stuff actually working is a little embarrassing for Harden because that wouldn't work on any other elite scorer.

[Wallace_Wallace]

So the Clippers have the 5th best and the best iso scorer in the game? The nickname should "Ice, ice, baby!"

[One_and_Done]

At least he didn't try to list Kobe.