[The Ringer] Rockets-Spurs Is the 2017 Playoff Series We Need

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https://theringer.com/rockets-spurs-2017-nba-playoffs-994d8c69d5dc#.hitpzjc5v

Rockets-Spurs Is the 2017 Playoff Series We Need
James Harden is exploding. Kawhi Leonard is still incredible. And if their teams meet in the playoffs, here’s how it will play out.
Shea Serrano
Staff Writer, The Ringer

On the evening of December 31, 2016, my sons and father-in-law and I went to the Rockets-Knicks game in Houston. We’d gone there to watch James Harden and also to boo Derrick Rose. The game was neat because basketball games are generally neat, but mostly because Harden, one of the four best players in the league right now, went all-the-way nuts. He put up 53–16–17, a stat line that nobody else in the history of the NBA had ever put up. Two things regarding that:

1. It wasn’t until after the game that I fully realized what we’d just watched. Harden has always appeared to be a bit into himself as a human. That’s of course understandable because, I mean, as far as humans and specific talent goes, he is exceptional. (This remains a fantastic response to a question.) As a basketball player, though, he plays as if he is unimpressed with his own offensive brilliance (and occasionally even annoyed by it), which is super interesting. To be sure, there are moments where he celebrates things, and those moments are fun. But what I’m talking about here is the way he moves, the way he floats, the way he bends the hard edges of the game into nubs. He doesn’t look especially quick, but he always seems to get where he wants. He doesn’t seem especially powerful, but he rarely seems to get bumped or pushed off his path. He doesn’t feel magnificent when he’s standing there during free throws or timeouts the way LeBron does or the way Allen Iverson used to, but he is. It’s uncanny. I remember looking at the scoreboard in the arena after the first quarter and seeing he had 8–6–6 and it was just like, “Wait. What the ****?” When he gets in that Destroy The Earth mode (which is often), he’s great to watch. I’m very happy that he’s on his Dwight Howard Is Gone liberation tour of terror this season. The NBA is better when James Harden is flexing.
2. Children do not care about history. The day after the game, I was sitting on the couch at home trying my very best to make myself invisible so nobody would talk to me because that’s how I spend something like 60 percent of my awake time at home. (The other 40 percent is broken up among me lying down [10 percent], hiding in the bathroom [10 percent], and attempting to talk my wife into making out with me [20 percent].) I was watching a basketball show and they were talking about Harden’s performance. One of my sons was walking past, so I called him over. I explained how historic the thing we’d watched Harden do the night before was, expecting him to be at least a little impressed. He was not. His response: “Daddy, did the nachos taste weird to you? They tasted weird to me.” Children do not care about history. They care only about nachos.

At any rate, I say all that to say this: At the moment, the Rockets are in third place in the Western Conference. In first place are the Warriors (31–5), and, barring something strange happening, like maybe mass alien abduction in the Bay Area or Draymond Green just kicking his own guys in the dicks during games, they are going to stay there for the rest of the season. In second place are the Spurs (29–7). And then in third place are the Rockets (28–9). That’s the first tier of teams in the conference. On the second tier are the Clippers (24–14), the Jazz (22–15), the Grizzlies (22–16), and the Thunder (21–16). It seems unlikely that anyone from that second tier is going to be able to chase down anyone from that first tier. (The Clippers would be the most likely candidate, but Chris Paul is a character written by Shakespeare so there will only ever be heartbreak for him.) Which means that the Spurs and Rockets should finish in the second and third spots at the end of the season. Which means that for the first time in over two decades we might be headed toward a Spurs-Rockets matchup in the playoffs.
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