The mantle in James Harden's estate is adorned with trophies from a plethora of individual NBA awards he has won over his 11 seasons. He's a three-time scoring champion, and the league's 2018 MVP.
However, one item is missing: Harden has never won a ring.
This season in Brooklyn should present Harden with his best chance at capturing that elusive goal since he reached the NBA Finals in 2012 while with Oklahoma City. The offensive firepower of the Nets' Big Three of Harden, former Thunder teammate Kevin Durant, and Kyrie Irving warrant comparisons to similar iterations that recently won titles in Golden State and Miami.
Still, after acquiring Harden three weeks ago from Houston – in a blockbuster that cost them seven first-round draft picks or swaps plus a good chunk of depth – many pilloried the Nets, asserting they would now need three basketballs to accommodate an isolation specialist like Harden.
After watching the Nets integrate their new star in his first nine games, I feel confident in retorting that those doomsayers couldn't be more wrong.
It wasn't shocking that the Nets were averaging a ridiculous 124.5 points per game, the most in the league by more than five points, in that 7-2 stretch – not even including the head-scratching 149-146 loss in Washington on Sunday where Harden sat out with a thigh contusion. However, their 19.6 percent assist ratio, the league's fifth-highest in that span, is an indicator that they accomplished that feat not solely by relying on the supreme one-on-one talents of their stars, but by sharing the ball.
Harden has played an essential role in the shot distribution, to the point where Nets Twitter was practically begging for him to be more aggressive in creating for himself. He's averaging just four more field goal attempts per game than Joe Harris is since the trade, with a 24.4 percent usage rate. For comparison purposes, his usage in Houston has been over 30 percent for the last six seasons, with a high of 39.6 percent in 2018-19.
The Beard is averaging a whopping 12 assists per game as a Net, leading the league in the category. Some of the passes have been astonishing, highlighting his underrated ability to find people where no opening was apparent to even the most trained analysts.
While Harden's particular brand of offense may not be aesthetically pleasing to everyone, with all the dribbling in place and ensuing neck snapping as if he incurred whiplash on his drives to the basket, you have to acknowledge that his basketball IQ is astounding. He's not overly fast or athletic – he may even be considered out of shape – but what makes him special is how he reads the game. The manipulation of defenders with his ball handling to be able to get to his left hand, the understanding of angles, and the ultimate decision-making rival the best of all time. When you combine that with his shooting (48/38/89 split as a Net), I would argue the closest comparison might be Celtics legend Larry Bird.
Harden took some heat for a turnover glut as he was getting accustomed to how his new teammates moved around the court, but he has cut that back to an average of three gaffes per game over his last five outings, all Brooklyn victories. Still, his assist-to-turnover rate over all nine games was 2.84, which ranked 32nd in the league among the 171 players who played at least 24 minutes per game.
Harden has a knack to know when to defer and when to take over games. He is averaging nearly nine points per game in fourth quarters since the trade, which is tops on the Nets and third most in the league. In Tuesday's thrilling 124-120 victory over the Clippers, he was responsible for 15 of Brooklyn's 36 points in the final frame, with 10 points of his own plus assists on a Harris three-pointer and the full-court bomb to Jeff Green with 5.5 seconds remaining.
No, the big question surrounding Brooklyn isn't whether three's a crowd when they have the ball, it's whether they can stop opposing teams from matching their prolific offense. However, even on that end, no Nets player in the last 10 games has had a more positive defensive impact than Harden, in terms of on/off court points per 100 possessions allowed (116 versus 123). Other than center DeAndre Jordan, Harden might be the Nets' best post defender, as evidenced by the difficulty his heft created on Tuesday when he was switched onto Clippers star Kawhi Leonard, who shot 1-for-3 when Harden was deemed the closest defender according to NBA.com.
By all accounts, Harden is fixated on winning this season, which makes all the above numbers more likely to prove sustainable. If that's the case, the "scariest hours" for the Nets' competition for the NBA title lay ahead.
For a FAN's perspective of the Nets, Devils and Jets, follow Steve on Twitter @SteveLichtenst1.
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