Don't Forget James Harden Had the Three Greatest Playoff Performances in Process History
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"Remember the good times" isn't generally a maxim that applies to disgraced former Process-era Sixers once they have been unceremoniously dispatched. Try waxing nostalgic with the ladies and/or fellas over some lagers and crab fries about Ben Simmons carving up the Heat in the first round of the 2018 playoffs, or Jahlil Okafor's 26-point debut against the Celtics, or Al Horford's... uhh time he got a putback in the playoffs and screamed at Jayson Tatum?... and be prepared for lot of blank stares and changed subjects. It's just not in our nature to get sentimental about these guys once they're gone; no matter what they once gave to the franchise, those memories are always easily overshadowed by the later headaches, the drama, the disappointments.
This might be truest of all of James Harden. He was probably the most productive player out of all of these dudes -- averaging basically 21 points and 11 assists over the 80 games he played for the franchise, and even leading the league in dimes last year (while also averaging his lowest turnover number since his days coming off the bench in OKC). But talk about his Sixers tenure either five weeks, five years or five decades from now and the conversation will undoubtedly center around some combination of his playoff failures, his generally shitty attitude and his miserable final days of holding the franchise hostage. And while I do generally think Harden was more a good Sixer than a bad one, it's hard to say he doesn't deserve this legacy, or the boos he'll get upon his first return trip to the Wells Fargo Center as a Los Angeles Clipper in March (if he shows up at all).
All that said -- a week after the deal, with sufficient time having now passed for us all to do our best impressions of the BUH-BYE DICKHEAD cop from Goodfellas, I do believe some degree of balance and fairness is owed to our dear departed Uno. Because despite boasting a career rightly defined in large part by his postseason disappearances, Harden actually had three truly great playoff performances as a Sixer -- really, the three very best we've seen in this era.
The first one came two seasons ago, in our second-round series against the Miami Heat. Harden had been pretty miserable through three games in the series, looking as physically diminished and generally ineffective as he ever had in May, averaging about 18 and 7 while shooting 39% from the field and 21% from deep, and posting nearly as many turnovers (15) as assists (20). But in Game Four, he came to life, not only rediscovering some of his burst but suddenly becoming deadly from beyond the arc -- particularly in the fourth quarter, where he drained four absolutely massive threes, including a game-icing stepback in the face of Victor Oladipo that I still can't believe actually went down. His 31 points, nine assists and general late-game heroics led the Sixers to a series-evening win -- making them 2-0 against Miami with Joel Embiid, after Jo returned ahead of schedule from an orbital fracture suffered at the end of our first-round series against Toronto. We were absolutely foaming at the mouth after that win, swearing to Don Johnson and Uncle Luke that Miami was positively finito in the series.
The second one came at the outset of last year's Celtics second-rounder -- as close to a must-win Game 1 as the Sixers will likely ever have in the playoffs. With Embiid out until at least Game Two (and likely compromised the rest of the series) with a sprained knee, we desperately needed to come into Boston, shock the C's and escape with a win to swing the karma of not just the series, but the entire tortuous postseason history between the two teams. And we actually did it, because James Harden was just that fucking good: a jaw-dropping 45-point, six-assist night that again featured some incalculably huge fourth-quarter threes -- particularly the go-ahead triple right up in Horf's goddamn punim. The Sixers won the game and Harden carried them the whole way. It was a legacy-altering win, flying in the face of every single thing we thought we knew for sure about Harden as a playoff performer, and giving us real hope in a playoff series we needed as bad as we've ever needed a playoff series.
And somehow, his third signature playoff performance as a Sixer was his greatest of all. In Game Four of that same series against Boston -- with the Sixers again down 2-1, but this time with them 0-2 following Embiid's post-sprain return to the lineup -- Harden posted a LeBron-esque 42-9-8 in a game that went to overtime. The reason it went to overtime? Because while Joel was spending the fourth quarter being sonned to death by Horf (this fucking guy), Uno was once again saving the day: making huge play after huge play, including the tougher-than-you-probably-remember free-throw-line runner to tie the game with 16 seconds to go. And then, of course, with the Sixers down two in the waning seconds of OT, Harden caught and hoisted a wide feed from a double-teamed for Embiid the go-ahead three. It was very likely the single biggest and stonesiest basket of my Sixers-watching lifetime, getting Philly the win and saving both the series and Joel's legacy in the process.
Recounting those three playoff performances, even I have to wonder a little: How could James Harden possibly play three playoff games that sports-world-stoppingly great and still be leaving Philly with an even worse playoff reputation than he came here with? And most Sixers fans would answer that by pointing out that while Harden was clearly responsible for the three greatest Sixers playoff performances of the past decade, he was also probably responsible for the five worst. And I would counter that by saying, no, it was actually more like the seven or eight worst. Included in that tally are two brutal Sixers playoff losses each that followed those three games: Games Five and Six against Miami, Games Two or Three against Boston and -- after the Sixers did manage a Game Five win with Harden playing fine enough -- Games Six and Seven against Boston. I won't make you relive the individual terrors of those six games, but suffice to say that Harden averaged just 12.5 points and 7.3 assists across them, shooting 27% (as in, three less than 30%) from the field: a half-dozen performances so bad that we had close to zero chance of winning any of those games with him on the court.
And that was James Harden: Spending one game playing so brilliantly that you swore you'd love him forever no matter how bad he was from there, and spending the next two games making you look and feel like an absolute asshole for saying so. The latter feeling is the one we've mostly been dwelling on since Daryl shipped him to Los Angeles, but we should take a second to acknowledge that the lows with Harden were only as maddening as they were because the highs were also so laughably high. You might not be able to say we ever quite broken even with Harden -- at least not in the postseason sense -- but unlike other gone-baby-gone Sixers of the Process era, at least there are legitimately unforgettable moments to speak of in the positive side of his ledger. If things ever end bad with Embiid, Maxey, or any of the other dudes we love still left on the roster, we certainly pray that they have nowhere near as many nadir moments to recollect, but we can only hope the good times to remember are anywhere close to as good.