Harden's Career Path

If you listened to most people outside of Houston, you'd hear that people love James Harden's game, that he MIGHT be worth a max contract, but pretty much no one will say they think he's capable of being the best player on a championship team. They'll say in today's NBA you have to have a top 5 player to win a championship. These aren't crazy thoughts, pretty much every NBA champion has had a player who played at a top 5 level when they won and it's hard to imagine that a guy who averaged 17 ppg last year in his 3rd NBA season can be considered a top 5 player.

Or is it? Certainly in recent years it has certainly appeared that the true superstars have dominated from day one. LeBron, Wade, Durant, Carmelo, Rose, and Griffin have all come right into the league and put up huge numbers in their first year. Alot of people don't seem to realize that this isn't true for all stars, though. Kobe averaged 7 points his rookie year, Kevin Love and Deron Williams averaged 11, KG averaged 10. Plenty of guys have had less than dominant first couple of years, kind of slowly progressed, then boomed into elite players.

My favorite example of this is a guy who had a nearly identical career path to Harden through their first 3 years plus an offseason. He was a lottery pick as a teenage shooting guard and spent his first 3 seasons coming off the bench behind a star wing player. He averaged just 7 points a game in his rookie year, 9 per in his 2nd, then had a real encouraging jump to 15 ppg in his 3rd year that had some people thinking he might turn into a star. That's very similar to Harden's 10 in his rookie year, 12 in his 2nd, then a jump to 17. Then, much like Harden, this guy changed teams in the offseason and immediately became "the man" on his new team. His first year with the new team he made an even bigger jump up to 27 ppg. Again, strikingly similar to the jump Harden has seen early in this year. He'd eventually lead the league in scoring and, for a time, was considered one of the top 5 players in the game and a talent that could be the best player on a championship team.

Now, I know nobody wants James Harden to be Tracy McGrady 2, but I believe he can be everything that we always hoped T-Mac would be. I think just about anyone would say that with health and his head on straight that T-Mac could have been the top dog on a finals winner, and that might be exactly what the Beard is; An elite scoring shooting guard with rare vision and passing ability who didn't get to showcase all of his abilities in his first 3 years with his first team because of who he was behind.