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Houston Rockets Player Profile: James Harden

By Duncan Smith

May 23, 2015; Houston, TX, USA; Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) dribbles during the first quarter against the Golden State Warriors in game three of the Western Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports
May 23, 2015; Houston, TX, USA; Houston Rockets guard James Harden (13) dribbles during the first quarter against the Golden State Warriors in game three of the Western Conference Finals of the NBA Playoffs at Toyota Center. Mandatory Credit: Troy Taormina-USA TODAY Sports /
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James Harden did yeoman’s work for the Houston Rockets in 2014-15. The Rockets were battered by injury, losing a total of 399 man games. That total was the second highest in the NBA to the Minnesota Timberwolves, and the highest of all playoff teams.

Of all Western Conference teams, the next highest playoff team was the Portland Trail Blazers with 325 man games lost to injury. Among the wounded warriors were players like Dwight Howard, who missed 41 games, and Patrick Beverley who missed 26 games.

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With the sorts of injuries the Rockets dealt with, it was no small task for them to finish with the second seed in the Western Conference and get to the conference finals. Safe to say without James Harden they wouldn’t have been close to the playoffs. Because of that fact there was a raging debate over who should be named the NBA’s MVP last season.

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There were arguments whether it should be Harden, without whom his team would likely be irrelevant, or if it should be Stephen Curry, who was so good he almost never had to play fourth quarters of games because his Golden State Warriors ran everybody out of the gym.

Curry won the MVP award, but it didn’t really settle the debate as to what constitutes value in this situation. If we take a look at the net ratings of every Rocket player from 2014-15, only James Harden, Terrence Jones and Pablo Prigioni had positive net ratings in the double digits, according to Basketball Reference.

Mind you, Jones played 27 minutes per game, and only appeared in 33 games, so his net rating of plus-12 is going to be skewed by both a small sample size, and the fact that 696 of his 889 minutes were played with Harden on the floor. Similarly, Prigioni was a plus-14 but only played 24 games with the Rockets, and 220 of his 402 total minutes were played with Harden.

For the record, Harden’s net rating was plus-15, which was the second-highest total in his career. His best net rating was in 2011-12 with the Oklahoma City Thunder, in the season they went to the NBA Finals.

Harden has been derided over the past few seasons for a lack of interest on defense, but he took steps to not be a net negative on that end of the floor. His defensive rating dropped from 107 points against per 100 possessions in 2013-14 (when the noise was the loudest about his defensive deficiencies) to 103 points per 100 possessions.

He also racked up a career-high 1.9 steals per game. Nobody is going to argue that he should be Defensive Player of the Year, but he’s not quite a turnstile on the perimeter anymore either.

Where Harden really butters his bread (or stirs his soup, as the case may be) is on the offensive side of the ball. Last season Harden set career highs in points, rebounds and assists per game, and scored 37 points per 100 possessions. He added 7.7 rebounds and 9.4 assists per 100 possessions, and finished with a 31.3% usage rate, which was sixth in the NBA.

Harden has also been criticized for playing an aesthetically unpleasing style of basketball on offense. He is capable of shooting from the outside, evidenced by his 37.5 percent three-point shooting, but 52.9 percent of his shots come from in the paint, according to Vorped.com.

He slices to the paint at will, thanks to being bigger and stronger than most perimeter defenders, and he takes advantage of that edge effectively. He gets to the line virtually at will as well, as evidenced by his .561 free throw rate last season.

SeasonAgeTmLgPosGMPPERTS%FTrSTL%USG%
2014-15 ★25HOUNBASG81298126.7.605.5612.631.3

Provided by Basketball-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 9/29/2015.

As far as the aesthetics of relying upon free throws to score a big chunk of his total points, it’s worth noting that Russell Westbrook also had a high free throw rate of .445, DeMarcus Cousins had a free throw rate of .508, and LeBron James had a free throw rate of .413.

So while Harden isn’t the only player who gets to the line a disproportionate amount (and make no mistake, he takes the physical beating that comes from attacking the paint on a regular basis), he does happen to be one of the best in the NBA at that particular skill set.

Also of note, while we’re taking a look at these high free throw rate numbers, we can take a trip down memory lane for the sake of comparison and find that Wilt Chamberlain had a free throw rate of .776 in his final season. He had a rate of .594 over the course of his 14-year career. Just imagine the volume of those bricks going up.

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    • In the coming year, we may see Harden take a small step back from an overall statistical standpoint, and the Rockets will benefit from it. Assuming that everybody who was injured last year comes back in playing shape and can stay on the floor, Harden may not have to carry quite as much of the load as he did last season.

    The Rockets’ overall roster is a much more talented one than what we saw on the floor by the end of last year, especially with the addition of point guard Ty Lawson, who the Rockets acquired this offseason from the Denver Nuggets.

    Lawson will likely be able to lessen the demands on Harden by letting him play off the ball a bit more and forcing defenses to play him as something other than the primary ball handler and both the first and second scoring option.

    That said, we may see Harden as the primary ball handler no less than we did last year, and the Rockets may choose to shift the offense in such a fashion that Lawson (or Beverley and Jason Terry) will effectively play the 2 at times.

    Either way, a superstar who is rested due to having a bit more rest than he is accustomed to, or a superstar who plays offense like a man possessed will be a tremendous asset for the Rockets to have.

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