NBA MVP Watch: A Breakdown Of James Harden’s Historic Season

In a four-part series of analyzing each top NBA MVP candidate, we take a closer look at James Harden’s historic season

#FearTheBeard

That has been James Harden’s slogan for many years. His trademark beard has followed him since his first days with the Oklahoma City Thunder. The magnitude of what hides under that beard is what should make opponents tremble with fear.

Now we all know that Harden’s beard was a gift from the basketball god’s to make him appear more menacing than he is.

In all seriousness, Harden has been on a tear this season. He is producing at one of the highest levels of his career and he will look to capitalize upon that once he and the Houston Rockets move past the regular season and into the playoffs. Harden is in his perfect scenario right now. A new coach, new role, and a new supporting cast. Harden is ready to lead the Rockets into battle against the top teams in the NBA.

Harden’s new supporting cast consists of the sharpshooting duo of Eric Gordan and the recently acquired Lou Williams. Both of whom allow Harden the freedom to penetrate the defense because of their capabilities to spread the floor. Clint Capela and Nene both grab every rebound (defensive and offensive) that flies their way, which gives the Rockets second chance opportunities at the rim.

Ryan Anderson is the stretch-four that fits in perfectly with Mike D’Antoni’s system. And the one constant for the Rockets has been Trevor Ariza, who has always been reliable throughout the season.

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Harden’s new role is the point guard position rather than at shooting guard where he has established a name for himself. But this year with his new coach, Harden has slid over to the primary ball-handler position and boy has he flourished under his new role. One statistic that helps back up my claim is Harden’s assist numbers. He is averaging 11.2 assists this year, which is a career-best after averaging 7.5 last season.

If we dive a bit deeper into Harden’s numbers, they’ll reveal just how impactful his play has been. Harden has an assist percentage of 50.8%, which is a severe upgrade over his 35.4% last year. Assist percentages are a metric that estimates the percentage of field goals made by a team that the particular player assisted on while he was on the floor.

Therefore, Harden is assisting on more than half of the Rockets made field goals. To put this amazing feat into perspective, John Stockton had a 57.48% assist percentage during the 1990-91 season and Steve Nash had a 53.15% assist percentage during his 2011-12 season. One quick note before I move on, D’Antoni used to be Nash’s coach during his time in Phoenix and Harden is currently playing in a Nash-type role that D’Antoni has installed in Houston.

A very underrated statistic is the points generated by assists. This category is widely overlooked by analysts when they make their claims about who should be the MVP candidate. I will not look over this and will try to include it in the rest of my breakdowns.

Harden has generated 1818 points off of his assists and if we do the math, he has played 67 games so he is producing about 27.1 points off of his assists. Add together his points per game (29.1) and his points generated from his assists (27.1) and you get 56.2 points. Harden is producing 56 points when he is on the floor. He is an irreplaceable piece on this team.

One interesting stat that will definitely shock everyone is Harden’s potential assists per game.

Here are the top candidates for MVP and among the four, Harden has the highest potential assists per game at 21.7. A potential assist is a pass that leads directly to a possession event whether that be a shot, foul, or a turnover. That is ridiculous. That means that he has around 10.5 wasted assists per night. Harden is definitely getting his teammates involved night in and night out. The offense starts and ends with him.

This year, D’Antoni has changed the way that they Rockets are playing on a nightly basis. They are shooting more three’s and they have cracked down on the defensive end (well as much as they can with guys like Gordon and Anderson). Harden has embraced the chance to shoot more three’s and he is definitely taking advantage of it, shooting 49% of his shots from beyond the arc.

Harden is also becoming way more efficient than your average NBA player. His Player Efficiency Rating is a sky-high 27.6, which is higher than his 25.3 rating from last year. To create some perspective once again, the average PER is 15. Harden is on another level when compared to his peers. To break this down, let’s take a look at his 2016-17 shot chart:

As you can tell from the chart, most of Harden’s attempts are coming from his three-point shot and in the paint. He has very few midrange shots that he has attempted. To be exact, Harden is attempting 16.9% of his shots from the midrange area. We all know how inefficient midrange jump shots are and Harden has taken the liberty to practically eliminate them from his game.

When compared to his 2015-16 shot chart, you can see the changes Harden has made to his game to try and become more efficient. He has practically taken the midrange shot out of his game and has tried to take his game to another level.

Even though he is scoring pretty well, his shooting numbers are still average at best. He is shooting 35% from three-point land and is shooting 44% from the field. These are Harden’s raw numbers, but not all raw data tells the entire story.

Advanced statistics are Harden’s friend today and forever. He has a 62% true shooting percentage. A true shooting percentage is an efficiency statistic that takes free throws, three-pointers, and two point field goals into account when formulating the percentage. And to put some icing on the cake, Harden’s eFG percentage is 53%. The eFG% takes into account that three’s are worth more than the normal two-point field goal.

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Now I’m going to make a case for James Harden’s defense. It’s not bad per say, but it’s not good either. But honestly, in the current day in the NBA, perimeter defense for guards does not matter as much as their offensive value does because of the big guys that they have in the middle. A guard does not need to excel on defense to be a good NBA player, which is illustrated through guys like Harden, Russell Westbrook, Stephen Curry, and John Wall. All of those guys can score or create opportunities for their teammates on offense, but they are definitely not the best defenders.

Harden has stepped up his defensive game this season. Although his defensive rating is barely better than last year’s numbers (moving down 1 point to 107 from 108) his defensive plus/minus tells a much different story. Harden’s defensive plus/minus this year is a +1.3 which is higher than his -.4 rating last year.

This means that while he is on the court for the Rockets, he is positively contributing to their defensive efforts. Now he may not win Defensive Player of the Year, but he is attempting to do his part on the other side of the ball. This new emphasis on defense from Harden is coming from the Rockets new assistant coach, Jeff Bzdelik, who was hired over the offseason with ambitions of improving the Rockets defense. He has been preaching “defense-first” and even though that may not be D’Antoni’s philosophy, Bzdelik has been trying to get through to the players and his efforts have proven to be beneficial. As of March 15th, the Rockets are 15th in the league in defensive efficiency with a 105.8 rating.

One problem that seems to follow Harden this season are his turnovers. He is averaging 5.8 turnovers per game and that is the most turnovers per game among all active players. A couple advanced statistics that back up my claim that Harden does turnover the ball quite a bit is his turnover percentage.

A turnover percentage is an estimate of how many turnovers will be committed by the player over a period of 100 possessions. Harden has a 19.7% turnover percentage. What that means is that Harden will commit a turnover 20% of the time he has the ball. It has been a problem this season especially since he has taken over the point guard position, but he will figure it out. One element of Harden’s passes is how risky they can be. He has always had that problem.

In the video, Harden throws an ill-advised lob to his former center, Dwight Howard, and Dion Waiters swats it away and the Thunder ended up winning the game and advancing to the next round.

Side note: Can we appreciate the fact that Dion Waiters actually tried to play defense?

Harden has been known to throw those risky passes, and many times they do work.

Harden effortlessly backs down Damian Lillard and then throws the pass to Capela for the easy two. But, Harden has cut down on his bad passes this season. To break down his turnovers even more so, he has 65 turnovers from bad passes, 271 from lost balls, and 49 other turnovers that are due to traveling or a different cause for a turnover besides lost balls or bad passes. Harden will need to work on ball security next season to try and tone down the turnovers.

To emphasize the need for Harden to work on ball control I will show you his assist to turnover ratio. He has an assist to turnover ratio of 1.9. An assist to turnover ratio is found when you divide the total number of assists a player has by the number of turnovers. The higher the number the better. Right now, Harden ranks 91st among all qualified players.

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Harden’s impact to his team is invaluable. The Rockets net rating when Harden is on the court is +8 and when he leaves it drops to +3.2. He adds significant value to an otherwise mediocre Rockets team. This year’s NBA MVP race is definitely too close to call right now, but Harden is making some noise throughout the league this season.

*All statistics used in this article were obtained from Basketball-Reference.com*