Bill IngramBill Ingram Email Print 0

There are a flurry of questions in the minds of NBA fans in the wake of Saturday night’s blockbuster trade between the Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder. Did the Thunder take a step back? Is Houston a playoff team now? Did the Rockets give up too much? Did Oklahoma City get the best deal possible?

I spent a good deal of the morning answering those questions to one degree or another in my chat, so be sure you’ve read that.

There’s another question, however, that would seem to overshadow the others: Is James Harden truly a maximum contract type of player? That, after all, is the reason he was traded. The Thunder did not believe him to be a max player, while the Houston Rockets, with less to lose, were willing to make that kind of commitment.

By now, most NBA fans are familiar with the concept of Money Ball, which was made famous to casual sports fans by the movie of the same name. It’s also no secret to most NBA fans that general managers like OKC’s Sam Presti and Houston’s Daryl Morey are disciples of the statistical side of player analysis. The question we should be asking, then, is how far do we have to dig into the mountain of stats to find something that makes Harden look like a max player?

We start at the top, his basic stats that everyone understands. No, not his 13.5 points per game and his 28.6 percent shooting in the preseason. Preseason action is not a particularly good gauge for veteran players. We’ll also throw out his dismal NBA Finals run last season, in which he failed to score in double figures in three of his team’s five games. Overall, he is a player who has improved across the board in each of his three seasons, and averaged 16.8 points, 4.1 rebounds and 3.7 assists per game last year for the Thunder. He also shot 49 percent from the field, 39 percent from three and 85 percent from the foul line – all career bests. Those aren’t exactly Kobe Bryant or even Joe Johnson numbers, but they are solid, and they earned him the league’s Sixth Man of the Year award. Still, a max contract is not due a player with Harden’s stat line.

Many NBA fans know to go at least one level deeper when looking at stats, taking into account a player’s PER, or Player Efficiency Rating. Even there, however, Harden ranks just 30th in the NBA, and there are a lot of players who ranked above him who are not close to being max contract players. Nope, we have to keep digging.

Taking a look at each NBA players’ “True Shooting Percentage,” which takes into account field goals, free throws and three-point shots, we start to find a little more value in Harden. Last season he ranked fourth in the NBA, trailing only Tyson Chandler, Steve Novak and Manu Ginobili with a .660 TSP. The next chart down is number of wins added, where Harden (10.0) ranks third among shooting guards behind Dwyane Wade (12.8) and Kobe Bryant (12.7). Now we’re starting to see why Houston thinks Harden has a great deal more upside than he has shown in his first three seasons.

What does all of that mean? In a nutshell, Harden scored 66 percent of the time when he shot the ball last season, and he was in a reserve role in all but two of his games. The Rockets would like to project that out and see if he can score at a similar clip when he’s playing 10 more minutes and getting, perhaps, 10 more shots per game. In short, Houston hopes that the numbers hold and Harden rises to become the best shooting guard in the NBA this season, eclipsing Bryant and Wade.

Of course, there is a bigger question facing Rockets owner Les Alexander, who is set to pay $70 million for Harden, and will shell out roughly $13.6 million apiece for Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik three years out. Can a team built around Harden, Lin and Asik compete for a championship? And if not, isn’t that a lot of money to spend on a team that, on paper, is not currently a playoff team? Also, while Morey and his staff look at the cap hit, which is roughly $8.3 million per season for three seasons for Lin and Asik, the checks they will cash in three years will be that $13.6 million number.

That’s going to be a couple of awfully tough checks to write for an owner whose team is not close to being in the mix of Western Conference contenders.

Patrick Patterson Wants To Start

In the NBA, the offseason is very often a time of change. Most teams keep their core together, making tweaks here and there. Some teams make huge, roster-shattering trades. Few teams, however, make the sweeping changes that we’ve seen from the Houston Rockets heading into the 2012-13 NBA season. One of the few returning Rockets is forward Patrick Patterson, and he tells HOOPSWORLD that getting names and faces down has been a challenge from the start of training camp.

“Early on, that’s basically the toughest part, who and what you’re supposed to do,” Patterson said. “This team has so many new faces, everyone is pretty much hungry and they’re determined to try and get as much playing time as possible, so it seems like a battle almost every single day. We got some great talents on this team, we got some great youth on this team and we can utilize that while on the court. So as far as names go, we pretty much knew everybody within a week, so that part was handled. But as far as on the court and working out, trying to utilize our strengths, personal development and player development, we work on that every single day and so far it’s good.”

It’s been especially tough for Patterson, since the Rockets added quite a few players at his position as they were trying to collect assets for a potential Dwight Howard trade. Donatas Motiejunas has joined the team, and Terrence Jones, Royce White and Marcus Morris are all considered power forwards (at least part of the time) by the Rockets’ coaching staff. As of today, they are all still on the team. Patterson likes the competition, but believes he should be the starter on opening night.

“Yeah, you always want to play alongside the best people that you can as a team,” Patterson said. “We’ve got a lot of competition at the four, we’ve got a lot of fours. We have a lot of people who can pretty much play on the court, a lot of guys who can use their skills to help this team out in anyway possible. For me, personally, I want to be the starting four, so I’m going to do whatever it takes in order for that to happen. So I’ve got to work hard everyday in practice, be the first one here and the last one to leave, and just show the coaches that I deserve it.”

With so many changes, it’s hard for Patterson to choose one new teammate who is the most surprising.

“Probably all of them, I just can’t say one,” Patterson said. “Jeremy Lamb (who was traded to Oklahoma City in the Kevin Martin/James Harden deal), from watching him when he was at UCONN, seeing the type of scorer he was, but he can also play defense, too. He didn’t really get praised for his defense in college, he was more of a scorer, but coming here he’s pretty good at it. He can use his length and he can use his quickness on the court. Royce, he’s basically a big man that’s a point guard all in one, I’ve been extremely impressed with his play. Terrence Jones, I’ve been following him since he was at Kentucky. I’m well-aware of his game and him as a person and playing beside him. The list goes on and on, these guys seem to contribute to this team in one way or another and it’s going to make us better.”

Normally, even the teams that make major changes have one or two veterans to lean on as the new identity starts to set in. The Rockets don’t have that advantage. Kevin Martin was expected to wear the label, but he’s now playing alongside Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook a little further north.

“We don’t just have one person, we have to come together as a team,” says Patterson. “We lost all that, pretty much, veteran experience. We do have … Omer (Asik), same with Shaun Livingston … and Tony

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