Fuck Yea[h] NBA

The 3rd leading scorer on most basketball teams is the fulcrum by which a lot of title contenders are judged. Signing TWO scorers to a team is relatively easy and means that team stands a good chance of making the playoffs, but not advancing past the second round, but it’s the 3rd scorer/rebounder/defensive stalwart etc. in place that separates a team from the pack of mediocre contenders. Perhaps no NBA player in the Internet age has inspried as much purple prose as the vageuly Egyptian looking James Harden. 

His “style” on the basketball court mirrors his retro “look” with the beard, the vaguely hipster style (I hate “hipster” as a term, but in the interest of keeping my readers engaged, I’ll throw it in here) and his OG approach to the game. 

He wants to make his team better, and that’s what you want in your 3rd option. That Harden also comes off the bench merely exacerbates the consensus that he’s the perfect 3rd option (see also Manu Ginobili and some others that ususally start now). 

But that’s not what’s interesting about Harden. No, it’s his “right brain” approach to basketball that is truly confounding to opponents AND writers. When you watch him gracefully prance around the court (uh oh, mellifluous prose alert), you can’t help but compare him to an existentialist writer or a surrealist painter. He’s similar to renaissance men of yore, and as the Thunder continue on their quest for a first championship, you get the feeling we’ll be seeing some instances during the 2012 playoffs where Harden does some things that make his post-game wardrobes seem less awkward and more interstitional with his game. 

And that’s what’s so weird about Harden in an era where everyone can have a blog. His style matches his substance and when anyone tries to write about Harden they’ll inevitably write about his surface instances of flamboyance or abnormality to describe intrinsic aspects of his game.

When you watch him come off a high screen and roll where Nick Collison receives the ball from him on the high block (the perfect companion to Harden’s second team dominance), and Harden receives the ball back from Collison going full speed to his right only to shift the ball to his left (reminding all the defenders that yes—he’s got that Nick Van Exel advantage to his game) and then weaves his way to a lay-up, we’re left only with ethereal prose to describe what we just saw.

That’s why we all can’t help blogging about him. His game and his brilliance are on the periphery of description. He is a free verse man in a AABBCC world of sportswriting, but a world that’s just now reaching past the old formats.  

If we choose our USA Olympic basketball team under the auspices of representing what makes Americans so unique (at least in our own minds), Harden could very well be the first pick. 

[Further reading on Harden: Ian Thomsen at SI; Darnell Mayberry in the Oklahoman; Nick Gibson at Sheriden Hoops; PIc via]