ORACLE ARENA, OAKLAND, CA — One look at the final stats of the Golden State Warriors‘ 98-99 Game 2 victory over the Houston Rockets and one thing jumps out at you: “13-for-21 field, 3-for-6 on three-pointers, 9-for-10 from the line, 10 rebounds, and 9 assists.”
That was the line for James Harden.
Game 1 was not too far off, either: “11-for-20 field, 1-for-3 on three-pointers, 5-for-6 from the line, 11 rebounds, 9 assists.” That is correct. 66 points, 21 rebounds and 18 assists in the series so far. Harden missed a triple-double in two consecutive games by one assist each.
“Well, that’s the thing,” said Steve Kerr at the Game 2 postgame presser. “I mean, you look at the boxscore and you don’t think we did a very good job, but he’s hitting tough shots. We gave up a couple easy ones late. We were guarding the three-point line. He got into the teeth of our defense and dunked it once.
“All in all, he’s hitting a lot of tough shots. He’s a great player, just like Steph (Curry) is a great player, and both those guys are playing at a high level.”
Monte Poole of CSN Bay Area had the report with a discussion from Warriors assistant coach and defensive specialist, Ron Adams:
“I do think we’ve done a pretty good job,” he said. “The threes he made the other day were really difficult threes.
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“You have to have an honesty about what’s going on on the court. We can’t be fans. We can’t, because someone’s scoring and they’re doing a tremendous job – maybe in spite of the fact that we’ve done a really good job against them – we have to take some things in stride.”
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There also is this: Adams’ relationship with Harden goes back to Harden’s first two seasons in the NBA, in Oklahoma City, where Adams at the time was an assistant working in a similar capacity as he does for the Warriors.
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He knows his former pupil fairly well.
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“I’d like to say it’s a big factor,” Adams said. “I think we know what he does well. But he is who he is, and we have to move it up a notch. I think we’re capable of doing that.”
Adams knows Harden well. The two were both with the Oklahoma City Thunder before Harden jumped over to the Rockets, as Diamond Leung of the Bay Area News Group reported today:
“I know he has something up his sleeve over there as far as trying to defend me.”
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Adams, 67, served as an assistant for Oklahoma City when he saw the Thunder rookie Harden as a future standout. These days, Harden has had scoring performances of 28 and 38 points in Games 1 and 2 of the Western Conference finals against the Warriors.
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“It’s a little bit irritating to me,” Adams said. “That’s how I think. I don’t want anyone scoring on us.
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“I like James a lot up until that clock starts ticking and the game starts.”
Yet Harden knows his defender even better. Warriors shooting guard Klay Thompson has the direct one-on-one assignment guarding Harden. The two have known each other since high school when Thompson was not even scouted against by Harden’s coach in the California state championship game.
As for Game 3 and the remainder of this series, Thompson is ready, despite Harden’s eye-popping numbers.
“Hopefully I will limit him in Game 3. It’s a tall task, but it’s something that I’m up for. It’s fun,” said Thompson to reporters in the locker room after Game 2. “It doesn’t matter if James has 40 or 5 (points scored). It’s whether we win or lose and I don’t let made or missed shots dictate how I play defense, as long as I feel like I’m in his body making him take tough shots. Great players are going to make them and he’s one of them.”
Yet, being in Harden’s body might not be the right strategy, as Ethan Sherwood Strauss of ESPN.com writes:
There’s a jiu-jitsu to Harden. Defenders are trained to leverage their strengths, and Harden uses that against his opponents. He interprets size and length as merely a bigger strike zone for drawing contact. Aggressive defense gets faked into aggressively pursuing nothing or into fouling its focus.
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This is why J.J. Redick did such a counterintuitively good job on Harden last series. Redick isn’t long and isn’t experienced in pressuring the ball. So, he positioned himself in front of his mark, gave Harden some room and stayed keyed on where his torso moved. When Harden attempted to draw contact, Redick whipped his hands up and away, like he was playing bloody knuckles.
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In contrast, Thompson tries to stay glued to Harden’s jersey, leaving him vulnerable to fakes and push-offs. Defensively, less might be more for Thompson (note: I’d imagine that it’s much easier to dispense advice on guarding Harden than it is to actually do it).
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Can Thompson do better? Sure, but I’m not exactly sold on Harden maintaining this shooting stretch. I also think it’s worth it for Golden State to continue to defend this way, generally. Take out Houston’s shooters and force Harden to be a one-man offense. I’ve seen suggestions to double-team Harden, which I believe to be a generally bad move. You don’t want to create 4-on-3 situations when the other team has Howard, ready to flush the lobs that result.
Just as Adams helped the Warriors make the proper adjustment on defense to the Memphis Grizzlies‘ bigs, where it was not so much about Draymond Green and Andrew Bogut as it was about the defensive philosophies.
You can be sure that Adams and the Warriors coaching staff have a plan that is waiting to hatch.
“You look at his tendencies, which way does he want to go, which is he less effective, which way is he going to shoot a tough contested two,” said Andre Iguodala after Game 2. “So it’s like chess, but it’s easier said than done.”
“You watch a lot more film, obviously, and you try to watch film of yourself on a lot of defensive possessions,” Thompson added. “You have to be more familiar with their tendencies, even though you feel like you’ve been playing the guy forever. I can’t really change out there what I’m doing. Just got to stick with it.
“I’d be having a lot more doubts if we were 0-and-2, but we’re 2-and-0, so something’s working and just got to stick with it.”
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