Does This Video Prove James Harden Is The Most Underrated Player In NBA History?

James Harden is probably one of the one or two best shooting guards in the NBA today. Nobody is better at drawing contact on the way to the rim, and Harden’s an elite distributor when he wants to be. He has the physical tools and quickness to be a great defender, but it hasn’t shown itself in his play, especially last season.

Synergy — which tracks offensive and defensive possessions that end in a shot, foul or turnover — ranked Harden in the 18th percentile for defense, considered “below average,” and in the 84th percentile for offense, which is “excellent.”

Regardless of that disparity, James Harden averaged 29.0 points, 7.5 assists and 6.1 rebounds in 38.1 minutes per game last season. Those are monstrous per-game averages, and they’re the foundation for the video above from Mike Korzemba. Those numbers combined with the fact James Harden didn’t make an All-NBA team this year — after making the First Team the preceding two seasons — are the basis for Korzemba’s 12-minute video going through various reasons why James Harden is “the most underrated player of all time.”

Except, there are some holes in his argument, and it’s not just that funny GIF or montage you saw of Harden missing a mark on defense.

First, though, the beginning of the video is confusing. Korzemba calls Beard “overrated” for some reason:

That’s obviously just a mistake. He meant to say underrated, as the title of his video and ensuing argument prove. Still, it threw us off for a second because that’s how a lot of people feel about Harden; they think he’s overrated. We’ll come back to why in a bit.


Our biggest gripe is the logical fallacy of using Harden’s All-NBA First Team selection in 2014 and 2015 to prove what an incredible player he is before using his supposed snub from this past year’s team to make a point about how he’s underrated. Was he properly rated before the 2016-17 season and then — seemingly for no reason — he was overlooked? Are NBA award voters so easily manipulated by the whims of the internet narrative?

Our next gripe stems from how the video compares players on the All-NBA team, using anachronistic stats like per-game averages:

Sure, it also mentions win shares and player efficiency rating (PER), which lend themselves really well to Harden’s strengths (offense) and diminish the aspect of the game he struggles with (defense).

There are other holes in his argument, namely how Harden’s team performed during the 2015-16 campaign, and the inner-strife that saw them implode early on in their season. There’s a brief mention of chemistry issues, but the blame is passed off to Dwight Howard, and for good reason. Despite this, there are other reasons to cast aspersions on the claim Harden is the NBA’s most underrated.

After making the Western Conference Finals in 2015, the Rockets stumbled out of the gate this past year and fired long-respected coach Kevin McHale as a result. There were rumors at the time that Harden was at least tacitly involved in that decision, which makes sense because he’s their franchise player. But, even after McHale was let go, Harden’s allegedly “aloof” attitude was brought up in a player’s only meeting. Yes, Dwight has to take some of the blame, but as the leader of the team and their best player, Harden needs to soothe any ruffled feathers, particularly if he was the one doing the ruffling with an ice-cold disposition around his teammates.

But being a good guy isn’t necessary for All-NBA recognition (ask Rick Barry!), so what else prevented him from making the list, even though he made DIME’s own Third Team All-NBA?

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Let’s look at how Korzemba compares Harden to the other players who have averaged similar per-game numbers with his 2015-16 campaign. Yes, it’s an exclusive group as noted in the video, one featuring future and current Hall-of-Fame players LeBron James, Michael Jordan, Oscar Robertson and John Havlicek. Throwing out the Big O’s severely slanted counting numbers back when the Association played a lot more possessions per game (remember, per-game averages are how value is determined in this video), when you look at the win-loss record for the teams associated with those otherworldly statistical seasons, you’ll notice they all performed better than .500 on the season.

Harden’s Houston team was 41-41 in 2015-16 and almost didn’t make the playoffs. The majority of that blame has to fall on their star. And, if we’re being honest, that’s probably why he was left off the All-NBA team after making First Team the previous two seasons. He’s likely the best shooting guard in the game, so his team shouldn’t be struggling to lock up a playoff spot until the season’s final week.

Now let’s come back to James’ defense, because the excuse for his shoddy performance on that end of the court in the video is similar to one we’ve used while we’ve championed his rare defensive standouts in the past. Basically, Harden has such an enormous burden to carry on the offensive end — he led the league in minutes per game last season (another reason for those higher-than-ever per-game numbers) — he can’t be expected to expend as much energy on defense.

So then did James share the ball more on offense and work to develop his teammates’ offensive arsenal before taking over down the stretch? This way he doesn’t have to use as much energy on the offensive side of the ball and can work to stymie his opposing player when they’re attacking him with the ball. Sure, Dwight might not want to work in the pick-and-roll, as mentioned in the video, but the Rockets weren’t composed of just two players. Trevor Ariza is a reliable outside shooter and so is Patrick Beverley. Ty Lawson, Josh Smith and others struggled to find their footing in Houston, but as the video is being narrated, we can see why: Harden’s dribble-happy isolation ball last season would stunt any teammates, even if they had been near the caliber of an all-star, like Dwight.

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It’s easy to prattle on and talk about how Harden’s game isn’t very pleasing aesthetically. He dribbles a lot and stands around a bunch. There were roughly 100 times last season where we changed to another game on League Pass because we had to witness yet another step-back three with the shot clock winding down. It’s also easy to chalk that up to a roster that didn’t reach its desired potential. But, at the end of the day, it comes back to the leader and best player.

Harden didn’t bring it like he could have as an all-around basketball player last year. Sure, he grabbed a lot of rebounds, dished some assists and scored a bunch of points, but those counting numbers make up a fraction of a player’s actual impact on the game. Harden’s statistics were great last year, but for those of us watching Houston all season, we know they’re misleading. His numbers were up, but his overall game suffered as did his team’s. That’s a proper rating if you ask us.

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