In recent memory, it's difficult to recall an NBA MVP candidate as maddening as Houston Rockets shooting guard James Harden. Blake Griffin has always been looked at as an "annoying" player, but was never a serious threat to capture the award last season, when he finished third. Averaging 25.5 shots per game with a mere .420 shooting percentage, Allen Iverson earned his fair share of critics, but still came away with the award in 2001. Kevin Garnett—a guy known for diving under his opponent's skin like those scarabs in The Mummy—won the honor by nearly unanimous decision in the 2003-04 season, failing to polarize himself in the process. Perhaps Garnett's relative immunity had something to do with playing in the pre-social media era. Conduct a quick search on Twitter (key words: "fuck James Harden") and you won't be left empty-handed—for comparison's sake, even take a look at the same search with Curry's name instead.
James harden not even second for MVP fuck him
— C$ (@SAVxVDR) April 10, 2015
God damn. James Harden annoying as fuck
— Beke (@BekeGSW) March 31, 2015
If you think James Harden is the best player in the NBA right now, then FUCK your opinion.
— GreatnessTheater42 (@GreatTheater42) March 29, 2015Maybe we could find a better comparison if Bill Laimbeer had ever been a viable threat to win the award. Instead, Harden's present-day case more belongs to our political landscape, where heroes and villains are born everyday. In a recent article discussing Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, New York Times Magazine writer Mark Leibovich referenced "Bush Derangement Syndrome," a term created by conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer which Krauthammer defined as “the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency—nay—the very existence of George W. Bush.” Look around the fringes of the NBA, the place where the media and the fans reside, and you'll find a similar distaste budding for Harden with every foul and flop (of which there are many).
The hatred makes Harden something of an anomaly: A player too good to be denied, yet—in the eyes of many—still deserving of rejection from the NBA's elite. Just decimal points away from the NBA scoring title, Harden has willed the Rockets to a playoff spot despite the extended absences of fellow star Dwight Howard, the season-ending injury to back-court mate Patrick Beverley, and, most recently, the back injury that will keep 7-footer Donatas Motiejunas out of the playoffs. In this year's Western Conference, Harden's injury-riddled squad should look like little more than meat waiting to be picked off the bone. But thanks to him, Houston has ascended as high as the No. 2 seed in the standings. After suffering back-to-back losses to the San Antonio Spurs, the Rockets are now placed fifth in the conference—a testament to the West's tight-knit standings more than Houston's play. The Rockets have won 12 of their last 16 but still tumbled down the table in the past week.
Regardless, Harden's accomplishments have re-opened the age-old arguments about the Most Valuable Player award, and what it *hits blunt* actually, like, means, man. Should the best player on the best team win it? Should the best player, period, win it? Is a player more valuable if the rest of his team is relatively bad? In semantical terms, doesn't "valuable" mean—wait, why are we talking about semantics? This is basketball, isn't it?
We have this discussion almost every year, whether in basketball (Harden or Curry?), football (Rodgers or Watt?), or baseball (Trout or Cabrera?). In every sport, the MVP award has become too ambiguous; in many cases, it feels like a designation handed out to the player with the best narrative, a natural consequence of an award created by and voted upon by the media. Every good player has a good statistical case, but not every player has a good story to match. Consider Anthony Davis, who is absolutely shredding the league right now, statistically, but is constantly dismissed to next year, or some undetermined date in the future. Never mind the fact that anything can happen between now and Year X (just ask Derrick Rose). Regardless of the Pelicans' playoff situation, the undercurrent of any argument against Davis is that he isn't ready, or that his time hasn't arrived yet. In other words, it's totally arbitrary. A matter of taste.
Unfortunately for Harden, his game leaves everyone a little sour-faced. That is, he draws too many fouls. As Myles Brown puts it in GQ:
Granted, he draws [fouls] effectively, having led the league two of the past three years. But far too often they appear to be the sole purpose of his efforts rather than a product of them. The Rockets strength is in valuing efficiency, but exploiting these loopholes feels like the opposite. It's sluggish. It's weak. It's lazy. It defines him even more than his porous defense of years past. It shouldn't be what defines an MVP.
While being careful to not label Harden as a "heel," Bethlehem Shoals adds:
If Myles is right that this is a vote about the future of the NBA, I'll go even further and say that it's about our relationship with the sport. Do we want to fall in love every night as we do via Curry or be prodded into acceptance and appreciation like with Harden?
Let's be clear: Harden is the NBA's leader in attempted free throws by an intergalactic margin. He's made more free throws (707) than Russell Westbrook has attempted (637), which is all the more ridiculous when you consider the fact that Westbrook is second to Harden in the stat. For argument's sake, let's say that Westbrook hadn't missed 14 more games than Harden. At an average of 9.7 free throws per game, he would have attempted 773 total, putting him 43 below Harden. Even then, the gap is larger than that of any consecutively ranked players on the list below No. 5. Here's what I mean:
1.
And that goes on until at least No. 40. Harden has been playing for the charity stripe more than anyone else this season by any measure. There's no other way to put it. But it isn't all of his game, and saying that Harden's style of play represents some sort of existential threat to basketball itself might be an overreaction. The dude still has highlights. By way of his reputation, you just won't see them pop off on your timeline as much.
2.
There's further evidence to be found that Harden has the type of game we expect from our MVP. More important, we should remember that Harden's play is, as Brown pointed out, a tactic to exploit the game's loopholes so that his team can earn the wins necessary for the playoffs—and perhaps the wins necessary for MVP award contention. As Ken Berger of CBS Sports points out, "In the past 15 seasons, the MVP has come from a team with no worse than the fourth-best record in the league." If anything, Harden's style of play is simply exposing the holes present in the award's voting logic. Try your best to follow the thread deciding how many wins is enough wins to win the NBA MVP. Between Westbrook, Curry, Davis, and Harden, it's a web of contradictions.
None of this is to say that Curry isn't deserving of the award, too. He's averaging 23.9 PPG, 7.7 APG, 4.3 RPG; his defense is better than ever; and he's unbelievably close to joining the 50-40-90 club. Steph's candidacy isn't an act of conspiracy, but it does feel like compliance to the dominant narrative: He's the best player on the NBA's best team. In most cases, that would leave Harden in a sort of purgatory, trapped in an MVP race of good versus not as good. But because of his dedication to Houston's system and because his game doesn't hit the right notes, Harden has instead been relegated to the losing end of an ancient and, in this context, strangely out-of-place struggle: good versus evil.
