The 76ers offensive rating is the highest it’s been in over a decade at 121.5. Their Assist to turnover ratio is 1.98 which is also the highest it’s been for over a decade.
Could this be a Nick Nurse effect? Unlikely considering the Raptors offensive rating during Nick Nurse’s tenure and departure remained similar so he doesnt necessarily have the effect of the legendary coaching trio Mike Dan Tony on a team’s offense.
This does not take away from the fact that he is a very good coach but clearly the removal of James Harden has opened the Sixers offense into a less stagnant and more motion oriented offense.
Now for a look at James Harden’s Clippers:
The Clippers offensive rating as of now is the second lowest it’s been in 5 years at 112.9. The only year their offensive rating was lower was 2021-22 where PG only played 31 games and Kawhi missed the whole year due to ACL tear. We can conclude that adding James harden to the clippers SO FAR has been detrimental to their offense
Why is the offense worse?
Obviously as you can see, they run a very iso heavy offense with 3 streaky iso-players. On any given night 2/3 of the iso-heavy players are inefficient. Last night as we saw both Harden and PG were the inefficient iso players which led to them losing to the Jokic-less Nuggets.
James Harden in particular looks to be losing steam as the season goes a long. In his last 5 games, he’s been averaging 15 5 and 8 on 33/34/72 splits. If this production continues, obviously this Clippers team will have had the worst offense they’ve had in over 5 years.
What have you observed about the James Harden effect?
I chalk the Sixers improvement to coaching and development, though i don’t think Harden would help their current starting 5 unit. Hypothetically, he’d still be a huge asset as a secondary ball handler for the 2nd unit, but he’d also probably refuse that role. Meanwhile, lack of a 2nd reliable ball handler is the team’s biggest need.
As for the Clippers, while the results haven’t been great, it’s still a small sample size for Harden, and he may still very well be working himself into game shape. Those shooting splits will hurt any offense, but if he could improve them to acceptable levels, something like 45/38/80, who knows how much of an effect it could have on the team as a whole?
Hard to say he can do it, but that’ll depend on how cooked he really is. Basically, I don’t think it’s fair to call it a “James Harden effect” if he’s just washed as opposed to it being him playing up to his standard and the system doesn’t work.
He’s not been up to his Sixers level yet and AFAIK, he hasn’t suffered any major injuries since last year so we may have yet to see the true Harden effect, assuming he can continue to get into better condition.
Yeah it might be crazy to think about and 95% not likely, but I think if and when Harden realizes he isn’t getting close to a max next year, if he wants to sniff a contending team, we are the only contending team with cap space and we need a 6th man ball handler. Even though I don’t trust Harden any more as a guy to run a contending starting lineup, I think he would still ball out running the bench on 20mpg for the right price. Could be a 6MOTY contender for sure.
Damn, imagining the Sixers with Harden coming in mostly when Maxey sits to play primarily with Embiid to enact their deadly PnR would be an amazing option to have. Tired out from chasing those pesky DHOs? Here’s a dose of the most efficient play of 2022.
I totally believe he still has the skillset and ability to play the role, but pride and ego are a helluva thing. Plus, he’s probably gone too far with Morey to go back now. Even CM Punk took a decade (and feuding with another promotion) to come back to WWE.
Yeah I don’t see it happening with the Morey situation, but it would be hilarious, and would fix our minutes when Maxey is out. He would only have to play 20 minutes a night, and could probably win 6MOTY with I’m guessing but something like 14/4/6 stats off the bench.