James Harden is basketball’s leading scorer. He grabs six rebounds and dishes seven assists per game while ranking third in steals, too. The Houston Rockets superstar might be the league’s MVP front-runner less than three full seasons removed from winning Sixth Man of the Year.
And the 25-year-old saw all of this incredible success coming.
After his number 13 jersey was retired at Arizona State University last week, Harden’s mother recalled a note her son left her as a junior high schooler:
Mom can you leave me a few dollars? P.S. I’m going to be a star.
“At that point, I knew that’s what he was going to be,” Monja Willis told Cronkite News.
If only all of us could so accurately predict the future.
That was several years before Harden starred at Artesia High to become the 17th-ranked player in the ballyhooed class of 2007. He played two seasons at ASU and won Pac-10 Player of the Year in 2009, subsequently declaring for the draft and being selected third overall by the Oklahoma City Thunder.
Though Harden’s teenage boasts to his mother were well on their way to crystallizing, there was a time at the beginning of his professional career that seemed as if they’d never finish doing so. The lefty struggled mightily early in his rookie year, leading some to label him as a bust before he had a real chance to prove otherwise. Harden did just that as 2009-10 wore on and continued defying expectations thereafter.
How many believed he’d be a MVP candidate upon his trade to the Rockets in October 2012, for instance?
Two people, at the very least: Harden and his mom.
