Listen to Colin Cowherd defend James Harden after Los Angeles Clippers announcer Don Mclean harshly critiqued Harden’s ball-centric playing style Live on air.
“I just feel like this style, what Harden does, is manipulating the game somehow. Almost like cheating it somehow. And I don’t really have a thought beyond that other than I’m watching something that isn’t basketball. To me, basketball is player movement, ball movement, designed plays. Not just a guy walking it up and isolating every time. That’s why I brought up that point earlier, that who else could do this? It’s not like that within the system, he’s getting all these numbers. The system is built for him.”
McLean, a nine-year NBA veteran from 1992-2001 was targeting Harden’s rapid rise from role player, to All-Star, to world’s best scorer, as Harden has not only exploited coach Mike D’Antoni’s charitable offensive system, but completely blown the top off any perceived ‘shot restrictions’ that have historically offered precedent to how team basketball operates.
Harden leads the NBA in scoring by a wide margin, leads the NBA in shot attempts by a wide margin, leads the NBA in free throw attempts by a wide margin, and has fired off an unprecedented 994 three-points this season.
To put that into perspective, Michael Jordan took 1,778 three’s over the course of his entire CAREER.
Couple the shot volume with the ‘euro step’, a revolutionary legal way to take 4 steps in route to the basket, and his theatrics towards making marginal contact by defenders consistently result in free throws, and you have the most polarizing player in the league.
Check out the audio below as Colin takes exception to the announcer using the phrase ‘manipulating the game’ as Colin argues that the all-time greats ALL manipulated the game and that’s what made them transcendent talents who forever changed the way the game was played and strategized against.
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