Westbrook vs Harden: Most Valuable Players & Most Valuable Mates
The closing moments of the 2012 NBA Finals were all about LeBron James. This was the second season after The Decision, his second straight Finals appearance and his first championship. With three minutes to go in game five the embraces had already begun on the sideline with the Miami Heat leading by 22 points. LeBron was bouncing all over the place. Dwyane Wade was handing out hugs to anyone in range. Chris Bosh was driving his first through the air above him. Pat Riley stood contented in the stands, clapping proudly.
There was little thought for the beaten team, there very often isn’t when the best player on the planet leads his team to four consecutive wins for a 4-1 series triumph. But amidst the celebrations there was a brief cutaway to the Oklahoma City Thunder bench where their three young stars were standing together, James Harden hanging his arms over Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook.
Despite their best efforts they’d been comfortably beaten but the future seemed bright for that trio. The Heat had needed to lose one before they could win one and next year would be the Thunder’s time. With those three guys leading the way it had to be, this was the beginnings of the next great NBA dynasty – three players who five years later all look destined for the Hall of Fame. They’d swept the defending champion Dallas Mavericks in the first round before crushing the Los Angeles Lakers in the next, pretty much ending two dynasties there in the process. Then a 4-2 triumph over the San Antonio Spurs had them in the Finals, a year after falling at that Conference Finals hurdle.
But as the song goes, the future ain’t what it used to be. James Harden wanted to start and the team were hesitant to offer a max deal for him, which would take them into the luxury tax. That caused a falling out and Harden was traded to the Houston Rockets. The Thunder retooled as they would again over and over with Durant and Westbrook taking the team to two more Western Finals where they were beaten both times (by the Spurs in 2013-14 and the Warriors in 2015-16). Then Kevin Durant left.
The Thunder remain a competitive team under Westbrook’s guidance, stocked with helpful hands like those belonging to Steven Adams, Victor Oladipo, Enes Kanter and now Taj Gibson. The Houston Rockets have unleashed an offensive whirlwind of a team behind James Harden’s meticulous scoring. The Golden State Warriors, meanwhile, have probably the greatest team of shooters ever assembled and leading Klay Thompson and 2-time reigning MVP Steph Curry in scoring is a chap by the name of Kevin Durant.
They’ve all gone their separate ways since that engraved moment in the 2012 Finals but they’re all meeting up again in another way. The MVP conversation took a little more clarity when Kevin Durant was injured a month back. Zaza Pachulia was thrown out of a screen by Marcin Gortat and landed on KD’s knee, putting him out for at least four weeks, probably longer. An update of his status, with those four weeks now up, is imminent.
That kinda spoiled what was shaping up to be a perfect trifecta of candidates, as Russell Westbrook and James Harden’s triple-double stat stuffery placed them in prime position for Most Valuable honours too. You can never discount the likes of LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard or possibly even a couple others but for a while there the top three candidates all had something in common… they were the three men that once formed the finest young core in modern NBA history. The Thunder drafted all three of those guys in consecutive seasons (well, the Seattle Supersonics helped). That’s incredible, even accounting for how it all turned out.
Durant joined a team that had won 73 games the season before and he didn’t only add to their talents… he was the best damn player on the roster. He’d outplayed Steph and Klay and Draymond. Shooting a career-high 53.7% from the field and scoring 25.3 points every game. Add in 8.2 rebounds and 4.8 assists and that generally stunning and efficient majesty had him high in the MVP stakes. That won’t be the case now with KD unlikely to play more than 65 games this season, depending on what the injury update reckons.
But while the bad blood between KD and Russ would’ve added to a fascinating race, the media narrative suggests that it might’ve already been a one-outs between Westbrook and Harden. Those two don’t have bad blood, in fact they’re really good mates despite all the history. And they played each other for the last time this season just the other day…
Westbrook scored 39 points, grabbing yet another triple-double as he nears that fabled record, but James Harden’s 22 points and 12 assists were the more impressive as the Rockets blew the Thunder out in the second quarter and withstood every possible comeback strike, leading by as many as 25 points. Despite the personal numbers it was a unanimous decision in the favour of The Beard who had his fingerprints on everything his team did and they did it so well, hitting 20 triples and shooting over 63% from the field.
Westbrook is a force of nature. He is unstoppable. He will take a game by the scruff of the neck and demand it goes his way, shattering a past reputation as a shaky closer with some ferocious (if not fully clinical) clutch basketball. It’s a myth that he has no help on that team, even if they could use a shooter or two, but none of them dare step on Westbrook’s toes when he gets in the zone. They even leave rebounds for him. He’s on target to average a triple-double over the course of a full season, something only Oscar Robertson has ever done and that was 55 years ago – plus the Big O’s record 41 TDs in a season are under serious threat as well.
Watching Russell Westbrook do what he’s doing this season is beyond entertainment, it’s a visceral experience. But for all that he does, the Oklahoma City Thunder aren’t that great. Chances are they get a middle seed in the West, probably with a win total in the middle-late 40s. That they can do as well as that after losing Kevin Durant, an MVP winner with the franchise, is enormous but the MVP Award tends to go to the best player on the best team and the Thunder might not even be in the best ten teams.
The Houston Rockets are. They’ll win something in the 50s and probably get the third seed in the West. In the minds of many people those extra wins will be the difference between Westbrook and Harden, which pretty much books Harden for the MVP trophy he should probably have won two years ago (another reason in his favour, a historical sympathy – though Russ has plenty of that for the KD situation).
And it’d be a deserving victory as well for a player who didn’t present his best self last season but has certainly done that this time. Playing as a primary ball-handler, a faux point guard, his assists are headed for number in excess of 11 each game – his career average was 4.9 before this season. His rebounds are around 8pg, a couple short of Westbrook but still huge numbers for a guard. It’s not equalling as many triple-doubles but it’s still a brain-melting amount of work. Both Harden and Westbrook work to bring their teammates up. Harden does it better.
James Harden therefore holds a slight lead with a couple weeks remaining, though Westbrook could tip the scales again if he can beat those records of Oscar Robertson. Although it should be said that when Robertson averaged his triple-double in 1961-62, he didn’t win the MVP. Bill Russell won the MVP that season… because his Celtics team won more games.
Which has always been a major factor. Only two men have ever won the MVP on teams finishing lower than the third seed, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Moses Malone (who did it twice). That particular factor might not matter all that much this season though.
This has been an outlier from the start. We’ve never seen a player as good as Kevin Durant join a team as good as the Golden State Warriors before and with their stars all splitting the hype, it was unlikely any would make a sustained run at the Most Valuable Player against the one-man-bands of Westbrook or Harden or the big stars elsewhere with defined franchise player status (James, Leonard, Davis, George, Wall, etc.). Yet the Warriors were still gonna boss the standings and with the East being something of a mess and LeBron James’ Cavs struggling just enough that another brilliant season of his own has lost some steam, the only other standout team is the Spurs and Kawhi Leonard, for whatever reason, isn’t getting the chat that Westbrook and Harden are getting.
One of them will lift the highest individual honour in the sport and the other (and their fans) will feel massively offended by that. It’ll be the same regardless of who wins and the arguments are valid on both sides. Russell Westbrook is doing almost unprecedented things… but so is James Harden. What’s crazy is that they were once teammates, drafted, along with established MVP winner Kevin Durant, by the same franchise in consecutive years.
And now they’re not. Now they’re rivals.
Kevin Durant, to Mercury News in Jan 2017: “It’s easy to say we were supposed to be together for the rest of our careers, but it didn’t play out like that. I think all three of us will have memorable careers. And it’ll be a journey we’ll always remember, something that’s different and unique, playing with two different guys who are doing incredible things in the league right now. But when you look back, think about the fun times instead of what could’ve been.”
It’s the 2017 NBA All Star game. Harden, Westbrook and Durant are all on the same squad, about to lead the Western Conference to victory. During the game the focus would be on an alley-oop play between KD and Russ, seen as a symbolic mending of fences through basketball. After the game the focus would shift stunningly to DeMarcus Cousins and his breaking trade to the New Orleans Pelicans. But before the game it was all about Westbrook and Durant, forced onto the same team despite the simmering beef. Both dudes shrugged those dramas to the media. No problems here, they were each mature enough not to let their own baggage ruin the weekend.
But during warmups before the game, with the rest of the Western All Stars all shooting their shots at one end (including four Golden State Warriors, Kevin Durant among them) Russell Westbrook wandered off down the other end to throw a few up on his own. It was one of those images worth a thousand words, Westbrook all alone while the rest of his conference’s finest players hung out twenty metres away. So James Harden strolled down and joined him.
Two guys who came up in the NBA together and went on their separate paths. There was once a third but he left in more acrimonious circumstances. One of them will soon be crowned the NBA’s Most Valuable.