James Harden has veins made of ice and onions the size of a planet. The Phoenix Suns outscored the Houston Rockets 25 to nine, in the fourth quarter, to tie the game up at 111 points. All they had to do was play some defense and send the game into overtime. Then, James Harden decided he didn’t want to go into overtime.
The Suns clearly didn’t want Harden to go right, and once time on the clock had ticked down, they brought Isaiah Thomas over to force Harden left. While it’s not always smart to double up a guy with the creation ability of Harden, the Suns seemed pretty confident they could stop him before the buzzer.
Of course, things didn’t go as planned for the Suns, because James Harden crossed up P.J. Tucker in the worst possible way. Tucker stumbled, leaving Harden alone with an over matched Thomas. Bless Isaiah Thomas’s heart he tried to contest the shot, but Harden was in a spot he liked and was able to hit the shot.
Players stumble all the time, but it really looks like Tucker is playing for a steal there when he bites on the first step of Harden’s step back crossover. Had he not played for the steal, we might be talking about overtime instead of the end of regulation. Not that anybody is complaining, because there’s really nothing more exciting in the NBA than a game winner, and the move Harden put on Tucker was merely icing on the cake.