James Harden's Heroics Aside, Rockets' Playoff Fate May Have Been Set Long Ago
James Harden said they got their swagger back.
What remains unclear even though their season isn't over yet: Do the Houston Rockets actually have swagger, or is it all Harden's?
The Rockets had enough effort to deliver the predictable pushback Tuesday on their first night at death's door in the NBA playoffs, beating a visiting Los Angeles Clippers team due for a letdown, 124-103, to avoid Game 5 elimination.
But the feel of the series did not change: The Clippers have more ways to win games, and they should eliminate the Rockets in Game 6 Thursday back at Staples Center.
Harden was fantastic in Game 5, posting his first playoff triple-double despite fighting the flu. It was a deserved occasion to celebrate him perhaps for the last time this season because he has carried an inordinate amount of the Rockets' load.
That's sort of the problem, though.
The Rockets look like the consummate lose-in-the-second-round team because they are so reliant on Harden.
And his magic is the sort that is more bewildering to opponents in the regular season than in the playoffs.
It's not unlike how the first incarnation of Mike D'Antoni's Phoenix Suns was overwhelming to face in regular-season games because no opponent could be prepared for the pace and attack the Suns brought that was so totally different from other teams.
There's no one quite like Harden in the league, and when you're only facing him during a packed schedule filled with all sorts of other opponents, no one is truly ready to stop him.
Harden is flat-out brilliant at sensing when any defender's arms are out of position for him to move into for contact for a foul—and that's beyond the simple lazy reaching that often passes for regular-season-level help defense.
So he makes his crafty lefty moves, the whistles follow, and so do a lot of regular-season victories.
In a playoff series, though, players truly study scouting reports and actually listen to what coaches tell them. And if you have a paint protector of DeAndre Jordan's caliber, then you can preach to your perimeter defenders just to be solid and do their best to keep their hands away from Harden's body. You can force him to settle for jumpers with Jordan lying in wait.
That's how the Clippers can get away with using J.J. Redick as the primary defender on Harden. Whereas high-intensity Matt Barnes can't resist doing whatever he can, however he can, Redick has largely stayed solid and just been in the way.
Harden can still create and make shots—watching him drill step-back jumpers in King of the Hill one-on-one games against Kevin Durant and Paul George after USA Basketball practices in Las Vegas last summer was captivating—but the easier path to victory for him is the free-throw parade.
It is also the root of the Rockets' aggressiveness as a team.
To Harden's credit, he committed to that approach in Game 5, and it worked. Jordan got in early foul trouble, with Clippers coach Doc Rivers explaining to reporters postgame: "He was just trying to cover up for a lot of our mistakes. To me, we did a poor job of protecting DeAndre."
The Clippers basically offered up their regular-season level of defense Tuesday night—not far from the Dallas Mavericks' deplorable first-round level of defense that Harden shredded.
The Clippers were inconsistent with both help and rotations Tuesday; Chris Paul and Barnes repeatedly got out of position with mindless double-teams, leaving Jason Terry and Trevor Ariza to nail open threes even when Harden wasn't the one creating.
It was Harden's swagger, though, that the Rockets rode to a win, much in the same way they were able to in the regular season despite Dwight Howard's frequent absences as he struggled with a right knee problem.
As for Howard, he has been active in the playoffs, but it's impossible to rank him as one of the league's top 10 players the way Houston general manager Daryl Morey promotes when Howard doesn't give his team a clear way to win—or specific swagger.
The best that Howard gives the Rockets is excellent defense that can trigger transition offense, but that is hardly dominance. Without injured perimeter pest Patrick Beverley, the Rockets defense isn't the same—and obviously, it isn't as good as when the group can get set behind countless Harden free-throw attempts.
Behind Howard, the likes of Josh Smith, Ariza and Terry sometimes make plays and sometimes don't. The Rockets aren't a consistent enough three-point shooting team to make opponents pay for selling out with traps of Harden, which is why Kevin McHale resorted to moving Harden off the ball some to no avail in Game 4.
Harden is averaging 5.4 turnovers in the series. McHale was so desperate for more offensive playmaking in Game 5 that he moved Smith into the starting lineup because Smith is a decent passer—sometimes.
Things could have been different had Morey been able to secure one signature last July, when the Rockets were so close to adding Chris Bosh to their locker room—not only to offer a poised, multifaceted weapon, but to give the team a swagger other than Harden's.
Bosh proved on Miami's title teams that he is a uniquely powerful connector, someone who understands the importance of sacrifice and teamwork. That is its own kind of confidence, and it's definitely one the Rockets lack.
People can criticize Morey for dumping guys such as Omer Asik and Jeremy Lin, both of whom would've helped a lot in this series, to bid for Bosh—and letting Chandler Parsons become a free agent and then go. They can try to pigeonhole Morey as an analytics guy misunderstanding the importance of human character by investing in Harden and Howard, two suspect team leaders.
But Morey completely comprehended how much more Bosh would've offered this team in sheer talent and as a uniting force. And it was looking awfully good for Houston to have Bosh and Parsons with Harden and Howard until Pat Riley sold Bosh on anchoring the Heat's post-LeBron James rebuild (and threw more money at Bosh than Morey could offer).
Without Bosh and Parsons, Morey still saw the Rockets as a top-four team in the Western Conference—and Harden made good on that. Houston even managed the No. 2 seed, which is why there's still the semblance of possibility the Rockets could advance if they steal Game 6 from the Clippers to set up a Game 7 in Houston.
It hardly looks likely, but Morey foresaw that way back in July in taking a big swing that resulted in a home run until Riley leaped over the fence to bring Bosh back.
It has still been a nice season for Houston fans.
Yet that was the real day the Rockets lost their swagger.
Kevin Ding covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter @KevinDing.
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