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James Harden is a walking paradox.
The newest Cleveland Cavaliers star is a man who’s inarguably changed how basketball is played — especially by those at the top of the game. He has birthed an entire generation of players who put their own spin on the heliocentric, perfectly spaced, three-outcome offense he pioneered. Jayson Tatum, Trae Young, Luka Doncic, and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander are all offshoots of this mold.
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The main difference? Two of those players have won a championship. Harden hasn’t. And until he does, Harden won’t get as much validation for changing the game as he deserves.
“At this point of his career, he’s still very, very talented, very, very good,” Donovan Mitchell said. “You look at the desperation of him. The first thing we talked about was, like, man, this could be his last chance to try and go ahead and get a ring. And we’re all in the locker room with the same mindset. So when you have that desperation from everybody up top, everybody else follows.”
On one hand, it’s fair to judge Harden for not being able to deliver a championship. Basketball is a team sport, but when your team’s entire philosophy is built around making sure one person can succeed, you can’t really divorce the team results from the individual.
At the same time, winning a championship is outside of just one person’s control, and it always will be.
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“This whole ring culture thing is crazy,” Mitchell said. “It is what it is, right? I can’t fight it. It’s just what it is. That’s the way we value people.”
Two weeks ago, if you told a Cavs fan that there would be a packed house for a weekday game against the shamelessly tanking Washington Wizards team, with nearly everyone in attendance there to see Harden’s debut with the team, they would’ve thought you were crazy. But reality is often stranger than fiction.
We live in a world where James Harden isn’t just on the Cavaliers, he’s why they’re the favorites to represent the Eastern Conference in the NBA Finals.
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The Cavs are soaring up the standings and playing their best basketball of the season….
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/james-harden-shouldn-t-validation-113000573.html
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Publish date : 2026-02-18 11:30:00
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