James Harden produced an MVP-caliber season in 2016-17, but a disappearance in Game 6 of the conference semis remains an unexplained black mark.
The 2016-17 season wasn’t a breakout for James Harden as much as it was a reinvention of the tools that aided his ascension to superstardom upon joining the Houston Rockets.
The previous summer marked the arrival of Mike D’Antoni, who was brought on to jump-start a team that needed as much coming after a disappointing first-round exit.
D’Antoni had long been praised for his work with the Phoenix Suns in the mid-2000s, turning the team into a perennial contender and aiding Steve Nash’s run to consecutive MVPs.
He was the ultimate lifesaver for dying offenses, having orchestrated Phoenix’s famous 7 Second or Less offense with the types of gameplans that turned Jeremy Lin into a phenom and helped Kendall Marshall average 8.8 assists per game in 2013-14.
Upon arriving in Houston, Harden was already well-established as one of the game’s premier offensive threats, coming off a season in which he averaged career-highs with 29.0 points and 7.5 assists per game.
Yet where everyone saw Harden as a natural shooting guard given his listed height at 6’6”, D’Antoni was different. He recognized his superstar’s abilities to handle and distribute the ball in ways that already made him the primary initiator of Houston’s offense.
So rather than conform to the NBA’s traditional categorization of its five positions, D’Antoni embraced the broad range of Harden’s gifts by making him the full-time point guard.
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With the added spacing of free-agent signings Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson, removing the middle man for James Harden to impose his game worked wonders for both himself and Houston’s offense.
He put up 29.1 points — a then-career-high — and 8.1 rebounds per game — still a career-high. And with playmaking responsibilities entirely in his hands, Harden also averaged 11.2 assists per game, by far the most of his career and a league-high on the year
By embracing the basic principles of the 3-point revolution, the Rockets ranked second in scoring with 115.3 points per game — 8.8 more than the previous year — while ranking first in threes made and attempted. They finished the season with 55 wins, good enough for the No. 3 seed and a first-round matchup with the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Upon breezing past OKC and MVP Russell Westbrook — much to the dismay of Rockets fans — in five games, Houston found itself in a battle for state supremacy with the San Antonio Spurs.
The Spurs were a 61-win team in 2016-17 thanks in large part to the continued progress of Kawhi Leonard. With Tim Duncan now retired, it was Leonard who assumed control of the franchise, averaging previous career-highs of 25.5 points and 3.5 assists.
The matchup pitted the league’s top defense against the No. 2 offense, pushing the series even through four games. But as Game 5 unfolded into a tightly-contested back-and-forth, it looked as though Houston was granted an edge that could prove the difference in the series.
At the 5:37 mark of the third quarter, Leonard rolled his right ankle on Harden’s foot, forcing him to rotate between the bench and the court before completely sitting out the overtime session. The Spurs still emerged victorious thanks to some late-game heroics by Manu Ginobili, but the larger question of their ability to advance to the conference finals was in serious danger.
In what was supposed to be a pressure-filled Game 6 for Houston to avoid elimination, it was almost as if Game 7 was a foregone conclusion once Kawhi was officially a no-go.
How could San Antonio compete against a juggernaut offense without its only All-Star? Who could Gregg Popovich turn to should James Harden find himself amid an explosive performance in the absence of the reigning two-time Defensive Player of the Year?
As it always is with Pop, the answer lied within the reliance of a well-oiled system that emphasized shot quality through ball movement. Leonard’s talents might not have been easily replicable, but his production could have been made up across multiple sources.
LaMarcus Aldridge led the way in Game 6 with 34 points. Five teammates followed in double-figures. 32 assists to just seven turnovers netted 114 points.
It was the quintessential example of everything that kept the Spurs dynasty running for more than 20 years but certainly not the type of effort Houston was expecting to face.
And yet, with the best player in the series on their side in a system primed to produce gaudy stat lines, the Rockets had everything they needed to withstand such a masterful showing from their opponent, or so they thought.
James Harden seemed passive in the first quarter, taking zero shots to finish the frame with just two points. Houston was down seven. An outlier start? Sure, but it wasn’t a gap Harden or his teammates couldn’t close against a team that took the sixth-fewest threes per game during the regular season.
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But what was at first attributed to a stark contrast in the energy with which both sides were exuding only grew less explainable from that point on.
Houston was outscored 30-18 in the second quarter to enter halftime down 19. Harden looked no better there with just three points on two field-goal attempts.
The latter 24 minutes brought on more of the same onslaught. San Antonio ran up the lead to as high as 42. Harden barely began to make his presence felt. Even then, only one of his nine attempts went in, and by that point, any idea of a comeback was non-existent.
Without the third-leading vote-getter for MVP, the still Spurs advanced to the Western Conference Finals by a final score of 114-75.
A 39-point road thrashing was peculiar under the circumstances, but Harden’s lackluster performance of 10 points on 11 shots and the reasons behind it remain a mystery.
This wasn’t your typical off night chalked up to the unpredictability and unfortunate timing of shooting streaks — as Houston showed the following year in Game 7 of the conference finals.
Harden hadn’t taken so few shot attempts in a playoff game since Game 5 of the 2015 Western Conference Finals against the Golden State Warriors. The last time his point total was that low came as a member of the Thunder in Game 4 of the 2012 Finals versus the Miami Heat.
San Antonio’s defense remained stout even in the absence of its best perimeter option, but a player the caliber of Harden in a system the quality of D’Antoni’s should be above that if only enough to crack the 20-point mark or fail trying.
That Harden seemed content to lose the game before it even started raised a range of different justifications from a potential concussion suffered via an elbow to the head in Game 5 to the less viable idea that someone did something to a beverage of his.
James Harden’s playoff resume seeks to disparage the elite talent he is, and games like this give it the justifiable ammo.
He had every reason to win this game, but losing it tells only half the story of its notoriety. The other lies in what can rightfully be perceived as a lackadaisical indifference to a moment that deserved more even with a favorable matchup.
Three years later, we still have no idea why.