How justifiable would Harden winning 3 straight MVP’s have been?

[An Unbiased Fan]

Harden is the perfect example of composite box scores being overrated

[One_and_Done]

Harden is the perfect example of composite box scores being overrated

If Harden was drafted by the 96 Lakers and got to spend his first 8 years with prime Shaq, he'd have more than 3 titles.

[homecourtloss]

Harden was more important to his team than LeBron in 2017.

Excuse you?

Maybe you’re thinking of 2018 when Harden had CP3 and LeBron didn’t have Kyrie.

Kyrie needed LeBron on court for literally everything. They often got worse, and their defense got much worse when he was on court without LeBron.

2017 Regular Season:

Cavs with Lebron On, Kyrie off: +4 per 100 possessions

Cavs with Kyrie On, Lebron off: -7.5 per 100 possessions in over 500 minutes of play

Playoffs:

Cavs with Lebron On, Kyrie off: +13.6 per 100 possessions

Cavs with Kyrie On, Lebron off: -23.3 per 100 possessions in over 500 minutes of play

[EmpireFalls]

Very justifiable.

[f4p]

Harden is the perfect example of composite box scores being overrated

I agree. If we look at things like on/off, prime harden was consistently great in the playoffs and rose substantially from the regular season.

Regular season vs Playoffs
OKC: +10 vs +15
Houston: +5 vs +10
2021 Brooklyn: +0 vs +5 (+36 in the first round before the injury but the 5 point increase symmetry looks nice)

I don't know what other postseason RAPMs are floating around, but in the Cheema dataset harden goes from +3 to +4 in the postseason. A +1 increase (edit: somehow my original post said -4 in the regular season, which was obviously crazy).

And in his starter days from Houston to 1st round in Brooklyn, hardens teams show about a +1 increase in net rating, indicating hardens +1 RAPM is largely responsible for the increase.

A true playoff riser! Is what the people who say they don't like the box score should be concluding.

[An Unbiased Fan]

Harden is the perfect example of composite box scores being overrated

I agree. If we look at things like on/off, prime harden was consistently great in the playoffs and rose substantially from the regular season.

Regular season vs Playoffs
OKC: +10 vs +15
Houston: +5 vs +10
2021 Brooklyn: +0 vs +5 (+36 in the first round before the injury but the 5 point increase symmetry looks nice)

I don't know what other postseason RAPMs are floating around, but in the Cheema dataset harden goes from +3 to +4 in the postseason. A +1 increase (edit: somehow my original post said -4 in the regular season, which was obviously crazy).

And in his starter days from Houston to 1st round in Brooklyn, hardens teams show about a +1 increase in net rating, indicating hardens +1 RAPM is largely responsible for the increase.

A true playoff riser! Is what the people who say they don't like the box score should be concluding.

+/- stats are for evaluating lineups, not players. Harden is an all-time great offensive choker, and played no defense.

[One_and_Done]

Harden is the perfect example of composite box scores being overrated

I agree. If we look at things like on/off, prime harden was consistently great in the playoffs and rose substantially from the regular season.

Regular season vs Playoffs
OKC: +10 vs +15
Houston: +5 vs +10
2021 Brooklyn: +0 vs +5 (+36 in the first round before the injury but the 5 point increase symmetry looks nice)

I don't know what other postseason RAPMs are floating around, but in the Cheema dataset harden goes from +3 to +4 in the postseason. A +1 increase (edit: somehow my original post said -4 in the regular season, which was obviously crazy).

And in his starter days from Houston to 1st round in Brooklyn, hardens teams show about a +1 increase in net rating, indicating hardens +1 RAPM is largely responsible for the increase.

A true playoff riser! Is what the people who say they don't like the box score should be concluding.

+/- stats are for evaluating lineups, not players. Harden is an all-time great offensive choker, and played no defense.

And yet he still managed to be more impactful than Kobe.

[f4p]

+/- stats are for evaluating lineups, not players. Harden is an all-time great offensive choker, and played no defense.

damn, i was so close to having a point, but it turns out both stats and impact on the court are meaningless. live and learn.

[Harry Palmer]

Incredibly underrated, imo he’s probably the single most un-guardable 1 on 1 player in NBA history, AND a fantastic playmaker. People forget how insanely good he was. One of my favourite recurring memories would be an announcer like JVG or similar talking about his foul baiting, and then they’d look at the replay and it’d always be ‘okay, that was a real foul, but…’ etc. over and over again.