We are #1 in the play-offs and were #12 in the regular season, but especially for Harden it's a crazy turnaround. He has averaged 4.5, 5.2 and 5.4 in the last 3 years in the play-offs. This year only 2.5 and especially in the last 2 games of this series has been very impressive. CP3 as well. What I've noticed is more iso at time so less chance of a TO, crisper passing and quicker decisions, but also less risky TOs. I haven't seen too many flashy / risky passes by mainly Harden, like between the legs, one handed, throwing at the ankles of Capela or Nene - did it once last night and Nene got the TO. I do wonder if it's skewed a bit since Capela had 3 and Nene 4 that they got some that were due to bad passes. In general, as a team though, we've been just been outstanding keeping turnovers to zero. In this game we started off with 10 assists to 0 turnovers and we were passing it a lot more than usual so we're really sharp is all I can say in general.
Harden has been notably less sloppy with the ball this season from the rest of his career. And he's forced the play less with Paul being in there to take possessions when the defense overplays on Harden to shut him down. All things that needed to happen for us to have any chance at winning a championship. One primary indicator to watch for in these playoff series is Hardens turnover count during the series. If his turnovers start to rise significantly above 4 a game in any of these series from here on out then the odds of us winning that series goes down drastically. So far so good.
