Sure. Pretty much every NBA player, especially a star, gets away with traveling sometimes. The popular criticism of Harden has been that he does it way more than most - which is pretty much impossible to prove or disprove without breaking down hundreds of thousands of individual possessions.
This is getting old. The rules were different back then and Harden's shot is different from Jordan's. Jordan takes two steps back during the gather which was perfectly legal back then. Harden takes two steps during the gather and then an additional two steps which is perfectly legal now. It looks weird because was the first to take side steps away from the basket during the gather. He invented a new move that doesn't look right, but is legal under the current rules. Many officials have commented that it is legal. Fans of other teams and old school analysts are just bitter. End of story.
The difference is in the gather. MJ does a traditional gather. Harden is illusive in that he gathers very late in a step allowing him to go further in distance than an early gather.
And here is the explanation by two different ex NBA refs. The gather is now considered the 0 step. Then you get two steps. Those of us who have been watching and playing for years don't like it, but that is the rule now. It is not a travel.
This is the rule, refs detailed it /thread and Harden probably messes up like less than 1 %. He's perfected the move, and that's why it's allowed. Sure the one the media shows where he traveled is the only one that gets highlighted, but He's so quick on the 0-1-2 it's hard to even see it in real time (the few times he might mess up). It's great when other stars try to emulate it and fail horribly and then complain about the call... When they're nowhere near as smooth as Harden.