On January 13, the NBA world was shocked to witness several players, a load of draft picks, and one giant beard jump from team to team in a massive blockbuster deal, the centerpiece of which involved James Harden going from the Houston Rockets to the Brooklyn Nets. The Rockets were 3-6 and in second-to-last place in the West, with a Harden trade potentially pointing to somewhat of a down year and subsequent rebuild. The Nets were 7-6, floating around the bottom half of the East's playoff teams and seeking that one piece — Harden, specifically — that would complete their own big three and thrust them to the top of the standings.
Three weeks have passed, but not everything has fallen into the exact aforementioned mold that consensus expectations may have laid out. So, how have things gone?
We'll start with Houston, and for good reason. After all, what better time to focus on a team than after they win their sixth game in a row, by 30 points, setting a franchise record with 28 three-pointers made in the process?
It didn't start out that way. Though they won their first game post-Harden, taking down the Spurs 109-105, the Rockets dropped the next three games and sat at 4-9 overall. Now, they're 10-9, and the statistics they're posting as a team are truly impressive.
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In the ten games since the Harden deal, the Rockets are averaging 113.2 points per game and allowing 105.9 points per game, which would rank at No. 11 and No. 3, respectively, in the NBA over the course of the 2020-21 season to this point. But John Wall was inactive for the first five of those contests. If you only look at the five games since Wall has returned, the Rockets are averaging 121.2 points per game and allowing 103.0 per game. Where would those stand among the league's total rankings to this point? No. 2 in offense, and No. 1 in defense.
Granted, you have to take the Rockets' opponents over that span into consideration. This six-game winning streak has come against the Pistons (5-15), Mavericks (8-13), Wizards (4-12), Blazers (10-9), Pelicans (7-12) and Thunder (8-11). It hasn't exactly been a terrifying gauntlet of matchups, but you still can't deny just how strong the Rockets' performances have been. Good teams beat bad teams, and that's what the Rockets are doing.
Over that stretch, John Wall is averaging 16.8 points and 6.6 assists. Christian Wood is continuing his stellar campaign — and he missed out on the first three games of their current streak — and is averaging 24.0 points and 12.1 boards since the Harden deal. And Victor Oladipo, who reportedly wanted out of Houston just as quickly as he joined the team, is posting 21.0 points, 4.7 rebounds and 5.4 assists in his seven-game career as a Rocket so far.
Will it continue? It's anyone's guess, but given that their next seven contests come against the Thunder, Grizzlies, Spurs, Hornets, Pelicans, Heat and Knicks — all very beatable teams — we could be looking at the start of quite the streak. Their first-half schedule ends on March 3 with a matchup against the Brooklyn Nets... how perfect is that?
And speaking of the Nets, it's time to look at how they've played since acquiring Harden. He made his Nets debut on January 16 and has played in eight games for his new team, averaging Harden-esque numbers (albeit lower scoring ones than usual) of 24.3 points, 11.8 assists and 7.8 rebounds. The Nets are 6-2 in those eight games, and and there's one simple reason why: offense.
It has been quite literally the best offense in NBA history, especially when you factor in the Nets' most recent game against the Wizards, though Harden was inactive.
149-146 was the final score. In regulation. How a team can put up 149 points (or 146 for that matter) in regulation is pretty hard to imagine. Oh, except for the fact that the Nets literally did it in the game immediately preceding this one, as they downed the Thunder 147-125. What's harder to imagine is how a team can score 146 points, in regulation, and lose.
So, yeah. The offense is rolling. They're scoring 127.3 points per game, which is almost nine points more than their pre-Harden stat line. The record for the most points per game in NBA history was set by the Denver Nuggets in the 1981-82 season, in which they averaged 126.5 points per game. You can also look at their offensive rating to showcase their dominance. Since Harden came to town, their offensive rating has been 122.6. The highest number in history was set by the Dallas Mavericks last season, when they posted an offensive rating of 116.7.
Side note: quite remarkably, the Nets are joined by the Bucks, Clippers and Nuggets this season, all of which are teams with higher offensive ratings than the 2019-20 Mavericks so far.
But you also have to ask yourself how the Nets, with an offense like that, have managed to lose a game at all since Harden came to town. And when you see that the Wizards had to score 149 points in order to topple the powerhouse offense of the Nets, you'll realize the one big reason why one might hold off on calling Brooklyn a title favorite: defense.
StatMuse's incredible revelation, embedded in our Tweet above, is not the only one they've made. Just look at the Nets and the Rockets in contrast (the Rockets are now 7-3, as this was posted before Monday night's win).
It's not just Harden's lack of defensive abilities, either. Kyrie Irving took a lot of the blame after their loss to the Wizards, saying that he couldn't guard an inanimate object, much less a professional basketball player.
Had Harden been active for the Nets-Wizards slugfest, who knows what the final score would have been, but I sure as hell would have loved to watch that game.
And sure, opponents will play into the Nets' side of the equation just like they did for the Rockets' side. Over this stretch, the Nets have faced off against such fearsome offensive attacks as the Bucks, Hawks and Wizards. But they also allowed the Cavaliers to win back-to-back contests in which they posted 147 points and 125 points in the two outings, which is just outlandish for a team that sits second-to-last in the NBA in offensive rating.
So what does this long-winded recap of the deal tell us? Perhaps nothing, if you can believe that. It might just be too early to tell and both teams may start to regress toward signs of normalcy. But it could also mean that the Rockets, rather than needing an elite scorer like Harden, just needed some newfound chemistry and a solid perimeter defender like Oladipo to get things going. And it could also mean that the Nets are just going to play out this season with guns blazing and with no regard for the defensive end of the floor.
It's anyone's guess as to what these two teams' trajectories will look like in another three weeks. But it's fun to speculate all the same.
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