How James Harden baits defenders into fouling him on the 3-point line

When it comes to getting to the free throw line, nobody does it as well as James Harden. He’s been the league leader in free throw attempts three of the last four seasons and he’s currently averaging a career-high 11.0 free throw attempts per game. If he continues at this rate, Harden will become only the fifth player since 2000 — joining David Robinson, Dwight Howard, Shaquille O’Neal and Karl Malone — to attempt at least 900 free throws in the regular season.

One of the reasons Harden is having a historic season at the free throw line is because he’s drawing fouls from the perimeter at a rate we’ve never seen before. According to a post on NBA Reddit last month, Harden had drawn 56 fouls on 3-point attempts at the midpoint of the NBA season. The next most was Lou Williams with 24 fouls drawn, followed by Damian Lillard with 14, Kyle Lowry with 14, Stephen Curry with 11 and Nicolas Batum with 10.

Harden has since added to his total, but the 56 fouls he had drawn through 40 games was already enough for him to set a new NBA record. According to the same data, only three players have drawn 25 or more fouls on 3-point attempts since 1999: Kevin Durant, Jamal Crawford and Lou Williams. Durant and Crawford drew less than 30 fouls each, whereas Williams had the previous all-time high with 44 fouls drawn.

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If you’re wondering why defenders can’t stop themselves from fouling Harden at the 3-point line, it makes sense when you consider the position he puts them every game. Harden has drawn most of those fouls out of the pick-and-roll, where he averages 11.8 points per game on the season. He is practically impossible to stop in those situations due his ability to pull-up from anywhere when defenders go under the screen and bulldoze his way to the basket when they go over.

To illustrate the latter, you’ll see Harden lose Andrew Wiggins rather easily in the video below by rubbing shoulders with Sam Dekker in the pick-and-roll — a trick players are taught to prevent defenders from slipping through the gap — and then taking the much less nimble Nemanja Bjelica off the dribble. As Golden State Warriors head coach Steve Kerr told the San Francisco Chronicle, it’s basically game over when Harden gets a defender on his hip because there’s a number of ways he can attack the defense.

It’s when defenders go over screens in an effort to prevent those sorts of breakdowns from happening that Harden is in position to draw 3-point fouls.

Think about it like this: The defender’s best shot at staying in front of Harden is to anticipate his next move by fighting over the screen before he has a chance to rub shoulders with the screener. However, Harden is smart enough to anticipate the defender anticipating his next move. So when they try to beat him to his spot by slipping the screen, Harden draws the foul by acting as though he’s going to pull-up by ripping his arms through the defender.

Watch him do it to Rodney McGruder, who does a better job than Wiggins at not getting screened but ultimately gets baited into fouling Harden.

There are two things worth keeping in mind when watching Harden draw fouls in this fashion:

Harden’s style. He doesn’t sprint past the screener and attack the defender downhill like Russell Westbrook or John Wall. Harden is less explosive and more calculated in his approach. Because of it, it’s not unusual for a defender to let down their guard for a split second when navigating around the pick-and-roll.

The defender’s movement. To fight through a screen, you’ll often see a defender shift their body 90 degrees and use one of their arms to slip through the gap with a sweeping motion. It’s almost like a breaststroke. The nature of that movement forces them to put their other arm out in limbo, which is what Harden needs to draw the foul.

With those points in mind, check out this closer look of Harden drawing a shooting foul on Wiggins.

Harden is more likely to draw shooting fouls by dribbling with his right hand and using his shooting hand to draw the foul, but he’s comfortable doing it either way.

Just to prove elite perimeter defenders also fall for it, notice how Michael Kidd-Gilchrist shifts his body and instinctively reaches out his right arm in the following possession. Even though the odds of Harden pulling-up several feet behind the 3-point line with 15 seconds remaining on the shot clock are slim, he pounced on the opportunity to draw a foul.

Here’s Kidd-Gilchrist falling for the same trick in a game from earlier in the season.

And once again from the same early season game.

There’s plenty more examples where that came from — 50-something to be exact — but you get the point. Harden runs his defender off of a screen and acts as though he’s going to pull-up for a 3-pointer by ripping his arm through the defender’s arm when they reach. Seeing as Harden has made 85.5 percent of his free throw attempts throughout his NBA career, it’s never a good option for the defense to foul him. The fact he’s still able to get to the line as frequently as he does despite teams knowing his tendencies is a testament to how well he draws fouls.

Next: Why Stephen Curry’s pull-up 3s have taken over the NBA

It’s worth noting this isn’t anything particularly new from Harden. He mastered how to draw fouls a long time ago, most noticeably on drives to the basket when he fully extends his arms rather than protecting the ball to bait his defender into reaching in. The only difference is he’s now using the same tactics beyond the 3-point line, and it’s been just as effective.