The ruthless efficiency of James Harden

I don’t like watching James Harden play basketball. In fact, I hate it! This hatred has nothing to do with skill level or rivalry. He’s clearly one of the game’s elite players, and, as a Knicks fan, I’ve got no beef with Houston outside of some lingering hard feelings over the 1994 Finals.

My beef with James Harden, however, is something I’ve been diligently feeding and tenderly massaging for years now. It is the Wagyu Prime of basketball beefs, and it’s based entirely on how he plays the game.

When I tell my friends, colleagues, and bodega guys that I hate James Harden (as a basketball player, not as a man! I don’t even know the guy!), I get some people who understand, but many more who do not. It’s forced me to think deeply about why I feel this way.

As a result of this monastic devotion to truth, I have come to better understand not only why I hate James Harden, but what that hate says about how we go about choosing our favorite athletes outside of the well-established framework of rivalry. We all know that tribalism is the primary force behind sports fandom, but what else helps steer the ship? Is there a rudder? A succession of smaller sails whose purpose eludes me?

The Crux of It

I don’t think it’s controversial to say that James Harden draws fouls. In many ways, with apologies to that magnificent pile of hair on his face, it’s his defining characteristic. You could say he gets buckets, which he does, but it’s not his primary aim. At least not always.

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There are times when James Harden plays like the platonic ideal of a basketball player (forgetting, for a moment, his defense), especially this year, in what’s turning out to be an MVP-caliber season. He flashes unlimited range. He drives to the hoop at will. He hits the open man when the defense collapses, and despite all that energy expended he has enough in the tank to grab what is technically known as a “shit ton” of rebounds. It is truly a wonder to behold.

But there are other times, much darker times, when James Harden’s MO seems to shift, like a Westworld host who just had its personality sliders dramatically altered in an alarming security breach. It is during these moments that James Harden enters a zone I like to call The Sphere of BS.

When James Harden enters The Sphere he cares about one thing and one thing only: drawing fouls. This is not to be confused with an accusation of flopping. James Harden flops, sure, but everyone flops. Is he a little floppier than your average Carmelo? Perhaps, but that’s not what gets under my skin.

James Harden gets fouled. Legitimately! He shimmies and jukes and struts and hesitates until he catches his defender’s arms or legs or butt cheeks out of position, at which point he launches himself into the offending limb (or cheek) quicker than a Twitter egg correcting a typo. You can almost hear him scream, “WELL ACTUALLY” if you listen hard enough.

Much like that Twitter egg may be technically correct, James Harden does get fouled. He’s better than most players, and his shenanigans are totally legal. But they’re also totally wack.

I’ve come to understand it thusly: James Harden has a lawyerly zest for exploiting loopholes. It’s effective, to be sure. This level of chicanery eludes the vast majority of NBA players. You could even call it impressive, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. It’s an approach to the game that is borne of choice, not necessity, and it repulses me as much or more than trading unprotected first-round draft picks for Andrea Bargnani.

The Approach

I don’t like James Harden because of his approach. If this were a piece of narrative fiction, we’d call it his point of view. How does James Harden see the world? What motivates him? How does he make sense of it all?

That’s nearly impossible to ascertain. I am unable to crawl inside his heart and soul (thanks for nothing, science!), but I can see how he plays, and by the flickering light of those observations, I can discern what James Harden thinks is an acceptable way to go about his business.

What I see, unfortunately, is a ruthless pursuit of efficiency that reminds me not so much of sport but of commerce.

Basketball, at its peach basket core, is about putting a ball in your opponent’s hole and stopping your opponent from putting that same ball in your hole. That’s it! It’s a game about hole dominance. Hole disrespect. Hole worship.

When you’re learning the game, that’s what you focus on. You learn to dribble because it helps you get closer to the hole, which makes it easier to shoot, which in turn makes it easier to put the ball in the hole. You learn to pass because it gets your teammates wide open looks at the hole. Or maybe you’re kinda clumsy so you focus on defense. Nobody’s going to put the ball in your hole if you’ve got anything to say about it!

Now, some people will argue that getting fouled is part of good offensive basketball. Free throws are worth points, after all. It’s just another way of putting the ball in the hole, with pretty good odds to boot. That’s all technically true, but I see two fundamental issues with this take.

First, getting fouled, from this purist’s perspective, is what’s supposed to happen when you’re so good at the foundational skills of offense that your opponent can’t stop you by any other means. If you’re good enough at shooting, dribbling, and passing, your opponent will be forced to foul you.

Let me put it another way. If you practice getting fouled all day every day, but never once practice shooting, will you become a good basketball player? Or, will you become some sort of Duke-esque monster who slaps the floor on defensive possessions in a cartoonish display of grit and moxie?

Second, drawing fouls is an art, yes, but it’s Koonsian. It relies on an army of underpaid serfs (in this case referees) to do the dirty work for you. You come up with the idea to make a sculpture of a giant shiny kleenex box (aka crossover at the top of the key), but then you let your little homies finish it off for you Tupac-style (aka flinging yourself into your defender’s off-kilter body). Why not make the sculpture yourself, Koons? Likewise, why not try shooting the ball like you’re trying to make the shot, James? You might make it! Or better yet, you might get fouled while making it!

This style of play, this Sphere of BS, is an unwelcome reminder of the NBA’s status as A Business. Call a bunch of fouls on the playground and you’re a chump. Plain and simple. Draw a bunch of fouls in an NBA game and you’re wisely taking advantage of a style of play that allows you to maximize your efficiency. In business, this is key. In life, if makes you sort of a jerk. The NBA is a business, but it doesn’t mean I have to enjoy that side of it, and it doesn’t mean I want to be reminded of it when I’m watching one of the greats ply his trade.

I find it hard to blame James Harden for this. I’m not sure I would behave any differently if I were him, which gets into issues of free will that I can’t adequately tackle in the space of this column. But this much I know for certain: James Harden is a herky-jerky, pump-faking reminder of the many compromises we make as adults in order to survive and thrive. He is a free-throw generating machine whose gnashing gears make me think of layoffs and bottom lines and shareholders. There are times when he reminds me of what’s great about basketball as a game, but they’re overshadowed by The Sphere, which blocks out the sun of his awe-inspiring ability.

Now, some of you might love the NBA because of the bright lights, the pageantry, and the celebrities in the front row. It is, after all, quite the spectacle! And that’s fine. You should like what you like. What else can you do? But I love basketball because I love putting the ball in your hole and stopping you from putting it in mine. That’s my hole! Get outta there!

We pick favorite players, at least in part, because of what those players say about the sport that we love. What James Harden says to me is that slowing the game down to a crawl is worth it, because winning is worth doing whatever it takes.

I disagree. I think there’s honor, but more importantly beauty in refusing to take every opportunity that’s available to you to maximize your ROI, whether that’s scoring points or increasing your profit margins.

I understand that these guys want to win. I understand that they want to make money, but I look around and I see other players who don’t take foul-drawing to the same extreme, and watching them allows me to fully appreciate the beauty of the game. It can happen with James Harden too, but whenever he enters The Sphere I’m reminded of a world that feels strangled by the allegedly invisible hand of the “free” market.

You feel me?

Good, now let’s talk about free throws.

Free throws

There’s theory and then there’s practice. In theory I hate watching James harden play basketball, but in practice I hate it even more. Every time James Harden enters The Sphere of BS, spectators are treated to a nonstop barrage of the single most boring play in professional sport (with apologies to instant replay review): the free throw.

Those who know me well know there are few things in life I despise more than free throws. What’s to like? You’re basically watching someone practice. If that’s your kink I’m not going to shame you, but I prefer game action, and I think on that point most of us can agree.

I hate free throws so much that I’ve spent years working on a solution to rid the sport of their presence entirely. I’m not quite ready to reveal my plan–it needs some fine tuning–but let’s just say it involves a giant plinko board, an intricate system of levers and pulleys, and a hummus-filled moat.

I will concede, through gritted teeth, that a trip to the foul line late in a close game can be intense. But otherwise? Trash. Week old, wet, stinky trash. Any style of play that leads to a ton of free throws is inherently boring, and on this point there can be no disagreement.

Do you watch basketball to be bored or do you watch it to be excited? Easy answer, right? We pick favorite players who excite us, and nothing this side of steamed broccoli is less exciting than a free throw.

Is that it?

We’ve now delved deep into my hatred of James Harden’s style of play, but hate is a nasty business, and I’d be remiss if I didn’t try to rescue a few more lessons from the ashes of this column. So what else can we learn from this exercise? Where do we go from here?

Glad you asked! It turns out that, much to my horror, I am a Single Issue Fan, the slightly less nefarious cousin of the dreaded Single Issue Voter. All that it takes for me to turn on a guy is one 4-5 minute stretch of ugly basketball per game (although, in fairness to me it sometimes feels like James Harden spends entire games in The Sphere).

Is this a problem? If we’re electing a President, then yes, yes it is. Politics is a complex game with life and death consequences. You sometimes need to overlook a couple of nasty truths in order to make sure the bigger picture isn’t set on fire. But here’s the good news: we’re not electing a president, we’re watching sports!

One of the great things about sports is that they allow us to safely exercise some of our uglier genetic demons in a way that doesn’t have any real consequences. We all have tribal instincts. It’s baked right into our DNA. With sports, you can let out these emotions in a way that, while not necessarily classy, is at least healthier than hating, say, your upstairs neighbor for being kinda loud on a weeknight. Yell at that guy and you’re looking at weeks, months, or years of awkward interactions. Yell at James Harden while you’re watching TV and downing Bud heavies and the consequences are much less dire. To pretend we don’t harbor these feelings strikes me as silly. Better to let them out in something as relatively harmless as a basketball game.

The other thing I’ve learned is that I offer almost no redemption for sports stars. In life, I like to give people second, third, and 300th chances, as long as they show what I believe to be actual remorse. In sports, if you screw up once or twice you’re dead to me forever. I’m tired of being so magnanimous all the time! Hating people like James Harden allows me the occasional reprieve from my staggering levels of interpersonal grace.

James Harden could change the way he plays tomorrow and never egregiously seek contact again. But it wouldn’t matter. There will always be a special place for him in the darkest region of my soul, and for that I thank him.

And in all seriousness, what’s he hiding underneath that beard? Can you really trust a guy like that?