James Harden's MVP Brings Back Questions of What Might Have Been in OKC
The controversy surrounding the James Harden trade of 2012 may never fade.
It remains one of the most complicated and misunderstood transactions in league history. Every time the Thunder come up short, and every time Harden succeeds, the embers get stoked again.
"What if the Thunder hadn't traded Harden? How many banners would hang in Chesapeake Energy Arena?"
With Harden joining former teammates Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook in the NBA MVP club, the debate has come to life again.
The Thunder remained a Finals threat after the infamous trade, which sent Kevin Martin, Jeremy Lamb and a package of draft picks to OKC. Ultimately, all that remains from the trade is Steven Adams and Alex Abrines.
The franchise has posted nine straight winning seasons. Unexpected and significant injuries felled them. An unprecedented cap spike provided Durant a getaway car. An anticipated NBA title hasn't made its way to OKC. And fairly or not, the Harden trade will continue to get the lion's share of the blame.
A Perfect Storm
The Thunder didn't merely rise after relocating from Seattle in 2008...the team rocketed onto the national scene like Dom Toretto in a '93 Mazda RX-7 with a NOS button. The Thunder finished the 2008-09 season with 23 wins, setting them up to draft Harden third overall. Three years later, they're battling LeBron James and Dwyane Wade in the NBA Finals.
The NBA world has changed significantly since then. The emergence of the Thunder coincided with the sunset of the Kobe Bryant/Pau Gasol Lakers. The Spurs were thought to have been on their last legs—something that might actually happen in the next five to 10 years.
The Grizzlies, Nuggets and Clippers were frisky but ill-equipped to overtake the budding group of stars in the league's third-smallest market. Golden State and Houston were lottery teams and years away from relevance.
The Thunder seemed on the cusp of dominating the basketball world for the foreseeable future.
The trio of Durant, Westbrook and Harden found a groove during the 2012 playoff run. A lineup of those stars with Serge Ibaka and Kendrick Perkins was plus-8.2 points per 100 possessions, per NBA.com. Lineups with those three and the recently retired Nick Collison were even better.
Harden faltered in the 2012 Finals, be it because of a bruised hand or Miami's defensive scheme or, ahem, rumors of too much fun in South Beach.
In some parallel universe, he remains with the Thunder. He doesn't turn down a last-hour offer estimated to be 5 percent less than the max salary OKC was able to give—a discount in line with what other players previously accepted. He doesn't yearn for the spotlight that sources claim largely drove the trade in the first place.
Does OKC become the dynasty many envisioned?
Two's Company; Three's a Crowd
Big Three teams are common in NBA history. The Thunder had a Massive Three. How well and how long the trio would have continued to mesh is up for debate.
Usage rate is an estimate of the percentage of team plays used by a player while he was on the floor. In essence, how often does a play end with a player taking a shot, a free throw or turning the ball over? Elite players tend to have usage rates of 30 percent and higher (although a high usage rate does not make a player elite).
It's not unusual for teams to have two players with usage rates over 30 percent. Since 1977—the furthest back usage rate can be tracked—180 players have had such a usage rate while also playing at least 2,000 minutes. Only nine times have two players on the same team posted a usage rate of 30 percent or higher. None of those players won the MVP that season.
Squeezing in enough shots for two stars is difficult enough with only so many minutes and shots to go around. Satisfying a third is virtually impossible.
Durant won the MVP in 2014 with a usage rate of 33 percent. Westbrook missed 36 games that season because of a knee injury suffered in the 2013 playoffs. Westbrook came in fourth in MVP voting in 2015 when Durant played in only 27 games and then later won the award after Durant's departure to Golden State. Harden finished runner-up in MVP voting twice since joining the Rockets before breaking through last season.
Each player prospered individually in the absence of the others.
Harden has posted a usage rate of 30 percent or higher in each of the last four seasons. Westbrook has done it for the last eight, including a record-shattering rate of 41.7 percent in his MVP campaign. Durant has a career rate of 30.3 percent, though it dipped a few points in his first season with the Warriors.
With only 48 game minutes and approximately 100 possessions per game, it's tough to make the math work with three high-usage players.
So Much Talent
While the parts may not have fit together snugly, the reality is the Thunder would have simply out-talented other teams.
Maybe that would have been enough. If one of the stars had willingly taken a step back—Harden or Westbrook being the most likely candidates—the effects could have been devastating. That also assumes a clean bill of health, which Oklahoma City discovered is never a given.
Wade and James had overlapping skill sets and limitations but marched to four straight Finals anyway. The Warriors' core before and after Durant's arrival snaps together like a Lego set. San Antonio found success with a socialistic system that never took root in OKC. But each member of that Thunder trio became elite isolation scorers and might have become dynamic with a little offensive creativity and a lot of player sacrifice.
But star players in the real world don't always cooperate the way they do in NBA 2K. Bryant eventually wanted out of Shaq's enormous shadow. Stephon Marbury didn't see himself as second to anyone...not even Kevin Garnett. Kyrie Irving chose to chart his own path without James. And eventually, Durant felt he and Westbrook went as far as they could.
Guessing how many titles the core could have won is guesswork without the assistance of a science fiction gadget. If injuries and ego don't get in the way, perhaps several. Then again, the Thunder were in position to make a run like that even after the trade.
Any way you slice it, keeping the dynasty alive would have been unprecedented. Then again, so was drafting three future MVPs in consecutive years.
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