Clippers injury caused by James Harden in leaking bottom – NBA – Basketball | Sports Vision

James Harden once again attracted everyone’s attention when he was traded to the Clippers. He himself once said: “I am not a system player, I am the system.”

He never directly stated what he meant by that statement, but when he said that his offensive role was limited in the Sixers, it was obvious that he wanted to take more shots.

During the peak period of his career with the Rockets, he averaged 24.5 shots per game in a single season. Last season, his average number of shots per game dropped to 14.5. In his first four games with the Clippers, he averaged nine shots per game, but that number should increase from now on.

When Harden said he was the system, he actually didn’t expect that he would affect more than just the distribution of shots on the court. The teams he has played for are actually very similar in some offensive statistics. Regardless of the usage rate on the field, the characteristics of the “Harden system” can still be sorted out.

Few players in the NBA in recent decades can give their teams a certain style like Harden. Taken together, the team Harden plays for will show three characteristics:

While the Sixers’ ranking in passes per game last season (13th) wasn’t bad, that was the only outlier. In the 2015-16 season, Harden’s Rockets were ranked 24th, and then in his last four seasons with the Rockets, they were ranked third from the bottom or lower.

• When attacking, players without the ball rarely move

Since the 2013-14 season, the NBA has begun to record the distance moved by players in a single game, as well as the total offensive and defensive distance moved by players on a single team throughout the game. Teams Harden played on had low offensive range.

When he played for the Rockets, this statistic was below the league average. In the 2014-15 season, he almost fell into the bottom five. In the last five seasons of playing for the Rockets, the Rockets ranked at the bottom of the league. In the two seasons he played for the Nets, the Nets ranked fourth and second from the bottom in this statistic. As for last season, the Sixers ranked third from the bottom in the league in this data.

Regarding the dribbles per touch per game, the Rockets were not significantly higher in the early days of the Harden era, but after adding Chris Paul, this data increased significantly. In Harden’s last three seasons with the Rockets, the Rockets ranked first in the league in this statistic twice and second in another season. When there are players like Harden, Chris Paul, and Russell Westbrook on the team, this data will obviously increase, but it is not entirely because they will dribble more often, and there are other derivative effects.

When teammates of this type of player are on the court with them, because they know that they don’t hold the ball much, when they get the ball, their mentality of wanting to grasp it will make them tend to try to break through by dribbling instead of passing it out directly.

The accumulated examples over the past ten years have made it clear to everyone how Harden will affect the teams he has played for. The teams he has played in will show the following offensive characteristics: extended attack time, slowed down pace, a large number of singles, and easy-to-predict tactics.

Interestingly, in the first few games he played for the Clippers, the Clippers fully displayed the above-mentioned offensive characteristics, and this was without delegating all offensive rights to Harden. In fact, the Clippers coach actually publicly asked Harden to play more selfishly.

Harden’s average number of shots per game (9) ranks fourth on the team. The players who surpass him are Kawhi Leonard, Paul George, and Russell Westbrook. His average number of shots per game with the Clippers is actually about the same as Bones Hyland, who ranks fifth (8), and is still some distance away from Westbrook, who ranks third (13.8).

In terms of the number of touches per game, he averaged 56.3 times per game in the first four games, which is not yet high enough to rank first in the team, but the gap between him and the first place (56.8 times) is not big. His current number of dribbles per touch is 3.84, ranking first in the team, but in his peak period, he averaged 5.97 per game.

In fact, Harden’s personal style has been slightly different from his heyday, but the Clippers still fully display the characteristics Harden brought to the teams he played for in the past. The following are some statistical differences before and after Harden joined the team: