The Rotation: Point Harden is in the building

The NBA regular season is a freight train that waits for no one. With multiple games nearly every single night, it can be difficult to keep up. As a solution, we humbly offer The Rotation — a daily recap series sharing three big stories from the previous night, one focused on a player, one focused on a single play, one focused on the big picture.

Point Harden is in the building

By Brandon Jefferson (@pengriffey_jr)

James Harden is in the running for the best point guard in the NBA.

New Houston Rockets head coach, Mike D’Antoni announced during the preseason that Harden would be making the “switch” to the point guard position this season. Basketball Twitter was split on how this “new” position would workout for him and the Rockets. All Harden has done is dominate.

Harden has always been a great playmaker, but D’Antoni’s high-paced offense has given Harden easier passes to better shooters. With these new acquisitions, Harden has been able to ease himself into games. It’s become commonplace for The Bearded One to rack up 4-6 assists in the opening quarter.

With defenders having to worry about giving up open shots on the perimeter it’s opened the lane for Harden and that’s where he’s feasted as a scorer. If he’s not euro-stepping all the way for a layup, he’s seeking contact and getting to the free throw line. Last night, he had the whole repertoire working for him.

Another night, another MVP-caliber performance. Against the Cleveland Cavaliers, Harden ended the night as the first player in Rockets history to tally 40-plus points, 15-plus assists and five or more rebounds in a single game.

Harden was affecting the game in numerous ways — except defensively, of course — all night for Houston. If not for some uncharacteristic misses from the free throw line (Harden finished 10-14 from the charity stripe) this game, against the team playing the best basketball in the league, could’ve easily went to the Rockets.

This machine isn’t slowing down anytime soon. D’Antoni’s vague disregard for defense plays right into Harden’s strengths. Opponents are going to routinely get easy looks against the Rockets, but the test comes in having to score possession after possession. Houston believes they should score every time they have the ball and more often than not that shot is going to be an open three.

Read More: Doubting LeBron James is a dangerous proposition

We’ve seen other superstars get off to hot starts this season; Stephen Curry, Anthony Davis, Kevin Durant, Kyrie Irving, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, and Damian Lillard to name a few. Harden’s play has been on par with any of those names listed above. If the Rockets can pile enough wins together then he’ll have as good of a case as anyone to take home the Most Valuable Player award this season.

Harden put up one-of-a-kind numbers last season (28 points per game, six rebounds per game and seven assists per game) and was left off every All-NBA team. With the way he’s started off the 2016-17 season it would be laughable if he didn’t find his way on to the All-NBA Second Team at worst D’Antoni has finally found his successor to Steve Nash, all that’s left is for Houston to find someone capable of playing plus defense on a nightly basis – -Pat Beverley is reportedly ahead of schedule in his rehab.

The world knew that James Harden was a great player before one game was played this year. What the world might not have known though is that Harden had another level of his game he could go to. He’s showing everyone now and it has been beautiful to watch…on offense, at least.

Aaron Amazing

By Ian Levy (@HickoryHigh)

Aaron Gordon is a gifted athlete, blessed with an enormous body capable of enormous things. Last season, he and Zach LaVine resuscitated the dying art form of the dunk contest. On Tuesday night, against the Philadelphia 76ers, he took it upon himself to stage a little one-man dunk contest.

This is peak Aaron Gordon, at least in the here and now, a fact which is both striking and unfortunate. For all his athletic gifts, Gordon is still most effective attacking a rim with no defenders in sight. Everything else is a work in progress. As evidence of how much room there still is between his present and his potential, check out this brain fart travel from later in the same game.

That is not to say Gordon has no utility right now, he’s been mildly effective this year , he’s flashed some three-point range and the whole “play small forward like Paul George” thing doesn’t seem absurd on its face. But what Gordon is right now — a tremendous dunker and unpolished gem — is not nearly enough for the Orlando Magic to get where they would like to go.

Those dunks need to come in traffic, and they need to be wrapped around jump hooks and spot-up jumpers, and nondescript passes that keep the ball moving and breathe life into an offensive system. So, for now, we get the dunks and we love them. And we let them sustain us until that time when Aaron Gordon becomes everything he is supposed to be.

Crunch-time is under construction

By Brendon Kleen (@brendonkleen14)

The beginning of the NBA season is about analyzing the ways that offseason change manifests itself on the court. The more change a franchise undergoes, the more wrinkles there are to iron out during the early part of the year. Nowhere are these adjustments (or the need for them) more glaring than in crunch time.

Last night provided several examples of how teams are managing — or failing — to adjust properly in the last few minutes of close games.

Much has been made of the saturation of the NBA’s superstar tier, and crunch-time is when these players are supposed to shine. In New Orleans, we saw Anthony Davis carry an under-achieving Pelicans cast to a fourth quarter lead over the Bucks before the team’s defense slipped up in the closing minutes. Giannis Antetokounmpo’s star power was all it took for the Bucks to pull away and beat Davis’s Pelicans — a few putbacks and flips in the paint, a wide-open three, and a victory.

Minus Tim Duncan (and a whole lot of depth) this year, Gregg Popovich has had to get pretty creative in crafting rotations for his Spurs on a nightly basis. Last night, Pop went to Tony Parker, Manu Ginobili, Kawhi Leonard, Pau Gasol, and LaMarcus Aldridge to close the game against the Utah Jazz. Kawhi’s stardom is unarguable, and his two-way dominance early this season has been remarkable, but against the Jazz, he was forced into hopeless heaves and hesitant chucks too often in the final frame.

On the other side, a Jazz team that was supposed to struggle for its lack of a clear superstar relied on the wizardry of George Hill and big shots from guys like Joe Ingles and Joe Johnson to parlay a narrow lead into a 15-point victory. So much for that.

Finally, in Miami, the free-flowing Heat played through their point guard Goran Dragic to the tune of a sterling 25-8-8 line and a 17-point overtime explosion. Dragic scored six of his points in overtime, while in purple, someone was missing. DeMarcus Cousins of the Sacramento Kings, an Olympian and an elite (if oft disgruntled) player, entered the fourth quarter with zero fouls. He would not exit the fourth quarter; Boogie fouled out after a scrappy defensive effort by Udonis Haslem frustrated Cousins to the point of six (!) fouls in the fourth.

Another tale to be woven into the legend of Boogie.

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Finally, in Philly, the closest game of the night was played between two teams still in the acquisition phase of star development. The Orlando Magic make up for this deficiency by playing off of the pressure their backcourt creates and the matchup problem their center Nikola Vucevic presents. Last night, offseason acquisition Serge Ibaka was there to clean up mistakes, and won the game on two free throws with seconds to spare. Philadelphia continued the installation of their patented “Trying Stuff and Shooting Threes” approach, and it worked, kind of. They kept it close, Joel Embiid made a case for himself as that star they need, and they made the Magic work.

My roommate tells me every time he sees me watching NBA games that the last two minutes are the only part that matters, and in the first month or so of the season, as teams tinker and tweak, I’m inclined to believe him. Last night was a microcosm of how those patch jobs can work — or fail — on a random November night.