James Harden blames injurious originate on lack of ‘pickup’ ball, but any individual can behold impact of most up-to-date free-throw truth

Consider when Daryl Morey said that it used to be “unbiased steady” that James Harden used to be, or is, a higher scorer than Michael Jordan, and for that matter the ideal scorer in NBA history? That used to be filthy rich. 

On the time Harden used to succeed scoring titles in Houston and, analytically talking, if truth be told validating Morey’s recount. But very few folk would possess agreed with Morey’s overview, which used to be per a strict positive aspects-per-possession system. That system, for certain, incorporated free throws, which for years Harden piled up by taking his contact-selling programs to outright theatrical ranges. 

Nicely, that’s no longer working anymore. Over the offseason, the NBA resolved to discontinuance rewarding offensive gamers for drawing contact, or extra continually merely constructing the illusion of contact, by strategy of non-basketball moves and pure taking pictures motions, and Harden is never any longer the identical roughly scorer which ability. 

Through four video games this season with the Brooklyn Nets, Harden has scored 83 positive aspects on 78 shots. Having ideal gotten to the free-throw line three times per game, down from the double-digit makes an try he averaged in Houston from 2014-20, he’s averaging 16.6 positive aspects on 35 p.c taking pictures, along with 33 p.c from 3. 

Harden, for certain, is never any longer going to blueprint a correlation between his decline in phony heinous calls and his production. After Brooklyn’s loss to Miami on Wednesday, Harden attributed his rough originate to the season to his incapacity to play “pickup”  video games over the offseason, when he used to be compelled to rehab his hamstring. 

Listen, having to rehab an anxiousness over an offseason sucks. It does retain you from working on your game. However the dim truth at the relief of this dull originate is that Harden has never been an elite shooter. He’s 36 p.c from 3 for his occupation. He elevated himself to a ancient stage of scoring on sheer volume, each from 3 and the free-throw line. 

You might per chance well presumably behold him restful flailing away as a matter of dependancy, chucking shots up with no procedure of if truth be told making them the 2nd he feels contact, and in regular attempting to manipulate contact, or, over again, the look of contact, over unbiased taking pictures a typical shot in hopes of listening to these as soon as-friendly whistles. But they’re unbiased no longer coming, as captured on this thread by @NateDuncanNBA:

Now let’s make certain about this: Harden is never any longer only a made of volume and free throws. He’s a gigantic participant, and his play and numbers will safe. He’s restful no longer fully wholesome. His volume used to be continuously going to decrease, independent of the league’s crackdown on bogus calls, by virtue of taking half in subsequent to Kevin Durant.

But to counsel that this unusual truth of no longer having the flexibility to pile up positive aspects at the free throw line — no longer to speak the larger leeway it now affords defenders to if truth be told discipline his legit shots with out dismay of him collapsing to the floor savor he stepped on a land mine — is never any longer a vital segment of a brand unusual Harden equation, neatly, that’s unbiased naive. 

I mean the fellow has actually made extra free throws over the route of his occupation (6,585 coming into Wednesday) than he has discipline targets (6,537). For reference, Michael Jordan made 12,192 discipline targets over his occupation in opposition to 7,327 free throws. Harden is, comparatively obviously, disproportionately dependent on freebies. For certain getting much less of them is going to impact his game. And to date, it has been for the worse.