Rested James Harden Now Has No Excuse but to Show Up in Game 7 vs. Clippers
LOS ANGELES — All season long, James Harden carried the Houston Rockets. On Thursday night, Harden's supporting cast put him on its back and put the Rockets in the driver's seat in their seesaw-of-a-second-round series against the Los Angeles Clippers.
With Harden ailing, both from the field (5-of-20) and from effects of the flu, the Rockets—specifically, Dwight Howard, Corey Brewer, Josh Smith, Trevor Ariza and Jason Terry, with a smattering of Terrence Jones and a drop of Pablo Prigioni—chipped and chipped and chipped away, until what had been a 19-point Clippers lead in the third quarter had, by the end of the proceedings, flipped into a 119-107 win for Houston.
"I was a cheerleader," said Harden. "I was one of their biggest supporters. I was so excited for those guys and the energy they brought in the fourth quarter. It was unbelievable."
Harden, the NBA's MVP runner-up, didn't check back in until the one-minute mark of the fourth—and checked back out before any time ticked off the clock. By then, the Rockets were already up nine, courtesy of stellar contributions from the supporting cast.
"I was thinking about putting [Harden] back in the game, but those guys earned the right to finish that game, one way or the other," Rockets coach Kevin McHale explained afterward. "After a while, he had sat there long enough and those guys had a good rhythm and they kept getting stops and I'm like, 'I'm just going to let them go.'
"Hey, James got a lot of rest, so on Sunday, he'll be ready to come out and rock and roll for us."
The Rockets will need Harden to be the leader of the band in Game 7. He hasn't always been that against the Clippers, sick or not. Prior to this series, Harden had averaged a mere 14.8 points across 20 games against his hometown's less heralded team—his third-lowest mark against any opponent.
Harden's made considerable headway in that regard over the past week-and-a-half. But his numbers against L.A. in this series (24.5 points, 40.8 percent from the field, 4.7 turnovers) point to a player whose performance opposite the Clippers is still a step or two below what it might otherwise be.
These Clippers, for all of their failures and frustrations, have bottled up Harden before and are capable of doing so again. In the bigger picture, L.A. has survived do-or-die contests on the road during its four-year run with Blake Griffin, Chris Paul and DeAndre Jordan—from Game 7 in Memphis in 2012 to Game 6 in San Antonio this postseason.
"We've been in this situation several times now, a couple of times at home, once on the road," said Griffin, who finished with 28 points. "You know, we've got to come and play."
The same goes for Harden. He'll have the benefit of two days off before Sunday's end-all, be-all, as opposed to the usual one day between games.
Not to mention the fourth quarter from which his compatriots were able to relieve him.
Brewer scored as many points in the fourth quarter (15) as the entire Clippers team. Terry, Houston's 37-year-old elder statesman, managed to make life difficult for Chris Paul, who scored nine of L.A.'s points in the final frame. Howard didn't hit from the field in the fourth—and went just 1-of-6 from the line therein—but protected the paint with aplomb and teamed with Ariza to fluster Griffin into a scoreless fourth quarter.
Smith, oft maligned for his off-line long-range shooting, knocked down a trio of threes, the last of which punctuated an 18-0 Rockets run and prompted Smith to beat his chest in defiance of a stunned Staples Center crowd.
The only ones who weren't shocked: the Rockets themselves.
"I really wasn't [worried about not taking this back home]," said Brewer. "I've played in a lot of games in my life. You kind of get the vibe of games when you think you have a chance to win."
The confidence that Brewer and Co. leaned on was well-founded. That group put together a similarly shimmering performance in Game 5, when Harden piled up a shiny triple-double, but he was clearly hampered by the same illness that plagued him at times in Game 6.
Still, while the Rockets' clean-up crew has shown that it can bring the heart, hustle and energy that Houston needs, there's no guarantee that the same stellar productivity will hold steady. According to NBA.com, the fivesome that essentially won Game 6 for the Rockets was a net negative during the regular season—by 14.5 points per 100 possessions, in fact.
But that 35-minute sample is admittedly tiny, and the playoffs are an entirely different animal—one that seems to suit Houston just fine. After all, of that five-man unit, three (Ariza, Terry and Brewer) have tasted title success in the NBA, while Howard carried a team to the Finals once upon a time.
"We won't quit," said Howard, who piled up 20 points and 21 rebounds. "You know, we had every opportunity to tuck our tails and to sulk in defeat, but instead we rallied around each other. We continued to believe, and that's why we got the win."
Belief can be a powerful thing, especially when the belief in question stands in such stark contrast to reality. Clearly, it can accomplish a lot, as it did in fueling the Rockets' biggest postseason comeback since their last championship run with Hakeem Olajuwon and Clyde Drexler in 1995.
As Brewer recalled, "Trevor [Ariza] said at the beginning of the fourth quarter, 'We are going to win the championship, but we have to win this game right now. If we win this game right now, that's how you become a champion.'"
Chances are, it'll take more than a stirring speech and some unusual moxie for the Rockets to close out the Clippers at home, much less win the West and claim the Larry O'Brien Trophy thereafter. They'll need a healthy Harden, one who more closely resembles the singular force that laid waste to the rest of the league from late October into May.
With a little luck and a lot of rest, that Harden may well be the one who shows up to finish the job on Sunday.
Josh Martin covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Twitter.
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