I know Harden's scoring numbers are pretty bad at his standard, and from eye test, it's sometimes hard to watch when he kept missing floaters or even got them blocked. But I still think he has a decent series offensively, here's my reason. Jazz's defense is designed to stop Harden, essentially they're sending a double team on Harden every time he gets the ball. So when Harden is on court, everybody plays better. This series, Paul shoots 52.2% when Harden is on court, and 33.3% when Harden is off court; Gordon shoots 50% with Harden on court, 18.2% with Harden off court. PJ only played 9 minutes without Harden this series, so it's a small sample size, he took 3 shots in those 9 minutes and missed them all. It's clear that everyone benefits from the fact than Harden is on the court even though he hasn't been shooting very well, simply because he draws so much attention from Jazz's defenders. However, Paul hasn't been really effective leading the second squad. When Harden is off court and Paul on court, our net rating is -17, our offensive rating drops to 80.2 from 112.7 when Harden is on court. That's a more than 30 points per 100 possession drop in offense. Paul's competitiveness is exciting to watch, and I am not trying to blame him, just saying a problem that I found. In fact, Harden plays better when Paul is off court. Harden played 70 minutes(14 minutes per game) without Paul this series, he scored 68 points in those 70 minutes, shot 41.8% from the field and 37.9% from three, which are very close to his regular season production. I know on/off stats are largely affected by rotation and one series's sample size is still not very large, but this series, Gobert's minutes overlaps a lot with Harden's, and there is no lineup that is weak defensively Harden ever faced. Besides, most of the time, the player Harden played with when Paul is off court are the other starters plus House/Rivers. So I think there is enough evidence to say that Paul negatively affected Harden's scoring production to some extent. I think the reason can be that Harden is not getting as consistent touches when Paul is on court as when he is off court. Also Paul's poor three pointer shooting allows Jazz to help off him more easily which put more pressure on Harden. Jazz is a very good defensive team and they executed their scheme very well against Harden except for the first two games. Harden didn't play his best offensive games because of it, but I still think he had a decent series offensively. Also it seems that he starts to figure out how to play more effective against this kind of defense. I am glad we win, and next round against the Warriors, I am confident that Harden will cook anyone who tries to guard him one on one and we move to the WCF in 6 games.
