What Heat is doing to Harden and reaction from his team. And trash talk, praise from 76ers
If you turned on one of those talking-heads programs on sports cable television on Tuesday, there was a decent chance you quickly heard the words “James Harden,” and discussion about whether the 10-time All Star and 2018 MVP can drink from the fountain of youth and rescue the Joel Embiid-less 76ers in their second-round playoff series against the Heat.
“The story is James Harden,” ESPN’s Mike Greenberg said at the start of his morning show on Tuesday.
No it’s not, 76ers coach Doc Rivers essentially said on Tuesday, before his team watched Game 1 film at a posh Brickell hotel.
Harden, 32, led the NBA in shot attempts just two years ago (22.3 per game) and averaged 16 shots per game with the Nets before his trade to the 76ers in February.
But he averaged just 13.6 field goal attempts per game in 21 regular-season games with Philadelphia and took just 13 in Game 1, producing as many field goals (five) as turnovers on a 16-point night.
So with MVP candidate Embiid still sidelined by an orbital fracture and concussion, does Harden need to shoot more?
“I’m not stuck on the numbers,” Rivers said. “If he had taken 13 shots and done more things, I would have been happy with that… We’ve got to help him too. It ain’t just on James. The whole team, we have to get in our right spots. We work on spacing every day. We didn’t do it [well].
“We didn’t handle their pressure very well. I thought we should have but we just didn’t. That’s an adjustment we can make. If we do that, I think James will end up taking more shots.”
Even Harden admitted “I can be a little bit more aggressive. They did a really good job of just boxes and elbows, showing their bodies and crowding the ball when the ball screens came.”
76ers forward Georges Niang asked Tuesday: “How can we make things easier for James? We have to get our spacing down right where he can drive by their defenders and make kick out passes to us. If we’re all bunched up, that makes it easier on them. That’s more on us as players to figure out.”
Per ESPN’s Stats and Information, 12 of Harden’s 13 field-goal attempts were contested and the Heat double-teamed him on nine possessions. Nine different Heat defenders guarded him, with P.J. Tucker logging the most time on him (29 possessions).
Harden shot two for three against Tucker but committed three turnovers and had no assists on those possessions.
“P.J. is P.J.,” Harden said of his former Houston teammate. “Plays hard. That’s not something I worried about.”
Harden shot 1 for 5 against Max Strus, who’s an improved defender.
Per ESPN’s Ramona Shelburne, “the average closest defender on Harden’s shot attempts was 3.7 feet away, according to Second Spectrum; it was the third-smallest amount of separation in a game for Harden this season and the smallest amount in a playoff game for Harden in two years.”
One thing is clear: Harden isn’t close to the same player who averaged 30.4, 36.1 and 34.3 points in the seasons ending 2018 through 2020.
Per The Ringer’s Kevin Connor and Second Spectrum, during Harden’s last season in Houston, he blew by his defender on 48.2 percent of his drives on which he tried to score. This season, it was just 33 percent. And his shooting percentage on driving layups dropped from 55.7 over the previous four seasons to 48.1 this season.
“Houston Harden doesn’t exist anymore,” Fox Sports personality Chris Broussard said Tuesday. “It might be age and wear and tear. Harden has played more regular-season games than [Allen Iverson, Magic Johnson and Larry Bird]. He’s had a complete career already. If he’s beginning to fade, which he is, it’s not out of the ordinary.”
As for Embiid, he remains back in Philadelphia but could play at some point in the series.
“I know he did something [Monday] but not much,” Rivers said. “I know he’s feeling a lot better. I don’t want to give false hope either.”
THIS AND THAT
Here was the full quote from 76ers forward Paul Reed that raised eyebrows late Monday night:
“Honestly, I think we can definitely beat this team. We go out there, we be more physical than them and play more aggressive. Keep them on their heels, they’re going to fold. We see that happen in the second quarter and a little bit in the first. That’s one thing we realized facing this team… We can really beat this team. The whole team knew it.
“We have the offense. That’s not the problem. The only thing we have to worry about is locking them down every possession and getting out in transition. Once we do that, they can’t stop us.”
▪ Rivers said he will continue starting DeAndre Jordan, even though the 76ers defense has been dreadful with him on the floor and even though his team was outscored by 22 in his 17 minutes.
The 76ers allowed 159.4 points per 100 possessions in the 17 minutes he played on Monday. Philadelphia permitted 119.6 points per 100 possessions with Jordan on the court during the regular season. For perspective, the NBA’s worst defensive team this season, the Houston Rockets, relinquished 116.4 points per 100 possessions.
“We’re gonna keep starting him whether you like it or not,” Rivers said. “That’s what we’re gonna do because our guys believe in him. At halftime, we asked our key guys – because we were thinking about it because I thought Paul Millsap gave us some decent minutes – and to a man, that’s where they wanted to go. We love Paul, but… I don’t love the matchup with Paul and Bam Adebayo.
“We wanted more speed on the floor [than Jordan or Millsap], so we could do more switching. When we go zone and switch, we like Paul Reed on the floor. Unfortunately they crushed us on the glass at that point. They took 13 more shots than us, and that was big. We’re working with a small margin of error so we can’t give a team 13 extra shots on the road without Joel and think we’re going to win a game.”
▪ The 76ers’ smaller lineups — with Niang or Reed surrounded by shooters — “gave us a lift in the first half,” Rivers said. “I thought it hurt us in the second half” as Miami pounded the 76ers on the offensive glass.
▪ Rivers gave ample credit to the Heat’s defense on a night that Philadelphia shot 6 for 34 (17.6 percent) on threes.
“I wasn’t happy with how we played offensively for the most part for the whole game,” he said Tuesday. “I thought we played in random most of the game. It just jumped off the screen, when we’re not organized. They took us out of our sets. We didn’t run it properly.
“Give Miami credit. A lot of our looks were rushed. Analytically, it’s going to say we had great looks. Everyone in that room knows those were not good looks. I actually said eight or nine were bad looks, and I bet half of them I didn’t like. A lot of them were quick, rushed shots and that’s not how we want to play.
“I thought a lot was their defense and I thought that’s what rushed us. Give them credit. I thought their physicality, their toughness sped us up in the game. They were the far tougher, more physical team.”
▪ Philadelphia’s 15 turnovers led to 22 Heat points in Game 1.
“The biggest adjustment for us is taking care of the damn ball,” Rivers said. “But that’s being organized, running your offense correctly. We were supposed to be in those spots and then to get in the game and let that pressure take us out of it was really troubling. And 50-50 balls, I thought they won everything.”
▪ This was an interesting point from Rivers: “We spent our time trying to pick on certain defenders on their team way too much and it paralyzes your offense. We spent a whole game trying to pick who we wanted to play against instead of running our stuff.”
Strus and Tyler Herro appeared to be two players targeted defensively by the 76ers.
▪ Niang put it this way: “With this Miami team, you have to be patient [offensively]. They’re very hectic in trying to cause chaos. If you drive the ball, you’ll get the right shot. Just being patient and waiting to get the right one and a great one every time is the key to mellowing that crazy defense out.”
This story was originally published May 3, 2022 at 5:23 PM.
