Commencing Countdown, Engines On: James Harden Is Ready For Lift Off


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HOUSTON – James Harden has a special room picked out upstairs at Vic and Anthony’s where he can relax and enjoy a meal, tearing through a double order of pan roasted chicken with mashed potatoes and creamed spinach with his family. The table is enormous, the lights dim, and the service attentive. It’s a way for Harden to decompress and reflect on what’s important as he shares calamari, roasted bacon, and crab cakes in a place run by Rockets owner Tilman Fertitta (unsurprisingly, it’s a favorite among players). Harden can let down whatever guard he still has up in a familiar environment, relishing the time he gets with people close to him.

When he’s alone at the restaurant, though, he doesn’t take that room, choosing not to tuck himself away where the acoustics allow an inside voice to reach the far end of the table. He sits at the bar, downstairs.

He wants to be seen.

Why wouldn’t he? The superstar has transformed himself — physically, emotionally, spiritually — over these past few seasons with the Rockets since the trade that brought him over from Oklahoma City in 2012. The Beard emerged as a self-sustaining entity. The clothing changed, the signature shoe arrived, and an MVP followed. Harden needed Houston just as much as Houston needed him, and the team made good on that arrangement, signing him to the then-richest extension in league history last summer shortly after trading for All-Star point guard Chris Paul.

The Rockets went for broke in seeking a counter to the Warriors’ level of dominance and came 27-straight missed three-pointers and a Paul injury away from pulling it off. This summer, the team doubled down, as Daryl Morey swung for the fences by bringing in Carmelo Anthony. Instead of the home run the team desired, the experiment ended with Houston striking out and Anthony seeking greener pastures.

Houston has tinkered more than a Swiss watchmaker in the first month of the season, clawing to a .500 record with a win over the Warriors (missing Steph Curry and distracted by inner turmoil of their own) on Thursday night in the process. The noteworthy moments these past few months, in no particular order, include:

– The Ryan Anderson trade
– Replacing key rotation guys like Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute with economy signings in Michael Carter-Williams and James Ennis
– A lengthy RFA period for breakout star Clint Capela
– A fight against the Lakers that left Chris Paul suspended for two games
– Losing defensive coach Jeff Bzdelik to retirement before announcing that Bzdelik will come back
– Paul playing through a sore right elbow
– Melo in and out of the lineup, and eventually “sick,” and then with an empty locker
– Rumors the team offered four first-rounders for Jimmy Butler
– A Harden hamstring injury that forced him to miss three games

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Harden, while dealing with the aforementioned hamstring injury, visited the adidas store at the Galleria in Houston to take pictures with fans, enjoy a roundtable discussion, and coach a little Pop-A-Shot for an event surrounding the release of the Harden Vol. 3. His reps initially squashed the idea of Harden signing any autographs, but he sat down and signed for 15 minutes, anyway. When someone intervened to say “no pictures,” he waved each of the waiting fans in line over, even helping one elderly woman in a Rockets t-shirt take a selfie.

Harden is at home in Houston — the capital-H version of home – where a person is at peace and no longer clinging to driftwood after a shipwreck.

“It took me a while to sort of find my way here,” Harden told Dime during a group interview. “It took me a minute, a few years. I just started getting adjusted to it, just saw how much love and support they had, not only for the Rockets, but for myself in general, and they’ve just taken me in. So, over the years, I’ve tried to go out of my way to show my dues and give the city a lot of love and a lot of me. I kind of opened up a lot more, [I was a] kind of to [keep to] myself kind of guy, so I just want to open up a little bit more, and I’ve tried to do that.”

Whatever on-court demons he’s facing after a title slipped through his fingers don’t show. Harden looks emotionally lighter. He has his routine and his go-to places in the city as he balances work and play, giving himself ways to create and stretch his profile. On the court, the MVP checked off a major box for Harden, who lifted the award thanks to his cerebral offensive attack and devastating footwork.

Off the court, Harden took a more hands-on approach when designing his third adidas shoe, and the beefed up back heel is the biggest indicator of that. It was a push for “stopping fast,” and incorporated some of his moves, whether it be the exaggerated stepback, the eurostep, or the jab step that Harden utilizes so effectively.

“As he gets innovative with his moves and his movement,” Harden’s personal trainer Greg Howell says, “he’s a creator. He’s definitely a creator, and you see the league kind of mimicking a lot of his motions and movements. I think that’s an attribute to the shoe and being able to evolve in his game, and continuing to evolve.”

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A signature shoe serves multiple purposes for a player like Harden, who has taken on more ownership of the process. As we’ve seen with Kyrie Irving’s line of kicks through Nike, the design weaves together an individual’s style, characteristics, and attributes. As a player evolves, the series follows suit. Things Harden picks up or sheds get folded into the shoe, and players who identify with those moves (or even a basic attitude) gravitate toward the shoe as a sort of talisman.

Harden’s push to carve out his own space in a league filled with innovators has been gradual, but striking. It mimics his game; watch Harden play on a random Wednesday and you may think he’s having a quiet performance, wondering what the fuss is about. Usually on those nights, when you look at a box score, Harden’s at 25 points and double-digit assists through three quarters. Check back in at the end of the game and you’ll see a 40-point performance.

The domination erodes rather than explodes, an encapsulation of everything that got us here in the modern NBA.

It’s a matter of rolling the dice and acting accordingly, which is sort of the mantra of Morey’s Rockets. There’s a constant push and pull of determinism (everything is decided for us, death is inevitable, the Warriors will win and there’s nothing we can do about it), chance (injuries, just one or two of those 27 three-pointers falling), and free will (we will make our own luck, there is no such thing as coincidence, Vronsky met Anna Karenina because they both chose be on that train at that time) that occupies our lives at all times.

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There is no failure, only experience, and so on.

Houston’s team this season is a perfect example of that. They have the confidence and assuredness to try things and use the season to beta test, with the understanding that they’ll scrap it if it doesn’t work (see: Anthony, Carmelo). There will be players on the buyout market, there will be players for whom they can trade, there will be chances to improve the roster or change things. As long as Harden is on the team and healthy, they’ll compete. That’s the faith they have in themselves, and in Harden specifically. That’s the place Harden has gotten to individually as well.

Harden reflects that through his demeanor, his game on the court, his alignments from both a brand and cultural perspective, and in how he dresses. Despite being one of the best athletes alive, Harden is proof that it takes time for a person to grow into themselves and be okay with who they are.

“I wasn’t always like that obviously,” Harden says. “You can see in some of like my older pictures. Once you start being around certain people, you start kinda getting a high for it and start finding new designers and, like, these clothes, and who is this designed by, and what’s this. You start kinda … it’s kinda a hobby now. And then you start getting into it more. It was only, maybe, five or six years ago, and now I’m just in love with it, and I’m just in love with being confident. I mean, it’s all confidence, it’s just being comfortable with yourself and going out in the world every single day and knowing that you’re comfortable no matter what you have on. That’s what it’s about. I try to feed that energy off to as many people as I can. No matter how much your clothes cost, or how expensive it is or not, it’s about you as a person.”

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The old saying about poetry is that you have to understand the rules in order to break them. If you know iambic pentameter, and rhyme schemes, and each of the forms, you realize the gravity of the decision you make to unfix that form and play more loosely. It wasn’t just that e e cummings, or Emily Dickinson, or Allen Ginsberg were revolutionary in how they saw the format, it’s that they were masters of their craft to begin with. Take Pablo Picasso in art, or John Coltrane in music, or any artist in any field.

It’s not enough to take the risk; it’s understanding what the odds are and why you’re gambling in the first place. Risks are a part of Harden’s life, because, well, why wouldn’t they be?

“I think me as a person,” Harden says, “I’m just a risk taker. Not even just through fashion. On the court, just trying moves, even life, man. You never know until you try. I’m one of those guys that, if I feel some type of way, or I feel like it’s me and I’m comfortable doing it, then I’ll pretty much do it. I’ll live with the results after, and they’re either good or bad, so that’s just how my brain works. Sometimes it might be a little weird, but hey, who cares?”

As the great poet Phil Connors (Bill Murray) in Groundhog Day says, “you make choices and you live with them.” The Rockets and James Harden are at peace with that. There’s something soothing in that mindset, something zen about the meditative state amidst controlled chaos in which Houston operates. It’ll work, or it won’t. The distance from point A to point B is the true heart of the story, and whether it’s reflected in his approach to basketball, his approach to creating sneakers, or his approach to life, we’re in Harden’s journey through that story right now.

Dime was invited on a hosted trip to Houston by adidas for reporting on this piece. You can find out more about our policy on press trips/hostings here.

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