James Harden Page 24 - Sports News, Headlines & Highlights

Report: Oh God Yes, The Toxic Rockets Are Pursuing Jimmy Butler
If there’s one thing a top-heavy Western Conference contender built on the ball-dominant shot-creation of two ornery superstars locked in an “unsalvageable” personality conflict needs, it is an infusion of noted mature adult in the room and agreeable teammate Jimmy Butler. Thankfully, that is exactl...

James Harden Gave The NBA Too Much Of What It Wanted
What happened to James Harden and the Houston Rockets? This time last year, Harden was receiving his coronation as the league’s MVP and the Rockets were seen as the only real challengers to the Warriors’ dynasty, which they very nearly ended through an almost religious adherence to what we’ve devoti...

James Harden And Chris Paul Need Some Deep Breaths And A Long Hug
A new report from Vincent Goodwill of Yahoo Sports adds some gory detail to previous rumblings of a civil war between Chris Paul and James Harden. Goodwill’s sources describe the relationship between the Rockets’ stars as “unsalvageable,” and add that “Chris doesn’t respect James’ standing in the le...

Report: The Rockets Are All Fed Up With Each Other
With the Warriors severely depleted heading into next season, it stands to reason that the Houston Rockets are as well-positioned as any other team to take advantage and end the Warriors’ five-year Finals run. After all, they’ve been the only Western Conference team to seriously push Golden State, a...

Losing-Ass Rockets, At Long Last, Please Remove Yourselves To The Fraud Bin Immediately
I’m sure most Rockets fans are lovely people. The Rockets have a fine basketball organization, as creative and nimble and determined as any in the NBA. And James Harden genuinely is one of the most unstoppable offensive players in modern basketball history. Now. Can that team please get all the way ...

The Unflappable Warriors Are Being Flapped By The Feisty Rockets
It wasn’t pretty—it hasn’t been pretty, no two-minute stretch of this series has been the least bit aesthetically pleasant—but the Houston Rockets outlasted the Golden State Warriors in Game 4 to knot their conference semifinal series at two games apiece....

Steph Curry's Finger Mangled And James Harden's Eye Gouged In Opening Minutes Of Game 2
Basketball fans had every reason to expect Game 2 of the Rockets-Warriors Western Conference semifinal series to be ugly, with the Rockets working the officials in embarrassing fashion and franchise enemy Scott Foster assigned to the refereeing crew. But this was not the start that anyone imagined!...

Well That Was An Officiating Clusterfuck
In an ironic twist, it was James Harden that spoke up about officiating problems in Game 1 of the Rockets-Warriors series. He told reporters after the game that “he just wants a fair chance” and that he’s willing to live with whatever results come from the game as long as it’s called “the way it’s s...

Rockets Survive Utah's Aggressive Butt Defense, Advance
The Utah Jazz needed a few games to get there, but they finally worked their way into fighting range of the Houston Rockets over the course of their first-round playoff series. The hilarious strategy of defending James Harden’s butt started to yield dividends, and a Rockets offense that scored 122 a...

Not Even A Historically Bad Shooting Night From James Harden Could Stop The Rockets From Crushing The Jazz's Spirits
Given how badly the Rockets had crushed the Jazz in Games 1 and 2, if news were to come out of James Harden breaking some sort of postseason record during Game 3, the underlying assumption would be that it was related to scoring. That was half-true on Saturday in Utah when Harden set the NBA postsea...

James Harden Is Just Toying With Poor Ricky Rubio
The Houston Rockets have encountered little resistance through their first two games against the Utah Jazz. They’ve hung 240 points on the NBA’s second-best defense and hit 32 three-pointers. (Those would’ve come in handy last May.) Eric Gordon and P.J. Tucker are getting theirs, the weird bench uni...

Paul George Ended A Crazy Game On A Crazy Bucket
The final minutes of Rockets-Thunder on Tuesday night were a dense flurry of batshit. They featured Russell Westbrook swooshing a runner from 27 feet, Paul George earnestly looking to scrap with P.J. Tucker, and James Harden conducting the Rockets’ woozy show as usual. All of that is weird, but some...

James Harden Cooks His Spiciest Meatball Yet
At this point in James Harden’s absurd season, a 27-point first quarter is not all that shocking on its own. The dude has already logged 57 or more points five times in 2019, and the Rockets’ offense is weirdly at its most effective when Harden gets to step back across the three-point line to his he...

The Notoriously Rule-Bending Rockets Whined About The Refs In Their Loss To The Lakers
No NBA team has less of a right to complain about refereeing than the Houston Rockets, given how its two biggest stars have bought property in the gray areas of the rulebook. Chris Paul is a notorious flopper and instigator, while James Harden is James Harden, flailing his way to the line a million...

Josh Okogie Locking James Harden In A Closet Makes For A Satisfying Highlight
The Timberwolves beat the Rockets at home on Wednesday night, 121-111, and even though James Harden led all scorers as usual with 42 points on a nauseating 34 field goal attempts, he was far from unstoppable, as proven by T-Wolves rookie Josh Okogie on a pair of dramatic occasions within a couple mi...

Thirsty Rockets Gloat Over Video Of James Harden Committing Grave Robbery
The Houston Rockets resorted to just the saddest damn evidence imaginable Monday night, in an effort to push back against James Harden’s well-earned reputation as an often distracted and indifferent defensive player:...

Jrue Holiday Put A Nice Marinade On James Harden, Slapped Him On The Grill, And Then Ate Him Up
The biggest casualty of the Anthony Davis exodus may well be his poor sidekick Jrue Holiday, who is playing his proud butt off this season, as he generally does. Unless he too can engineer an escape from New Orleans, one of the NBA’s best two-way guards is going to have to make do with LeBron’s bear...

Teams Are Getting More And More Shameless About Defending The Rockets
The fun and frisky Brooklyn Nets deserve enormous credit for their overtime road win in Houston Wednesday night. Even with almost every useful non-Harden Rockets player either on the shelf or suddenly a member of the Rio Grande Valley Vipers, that’s still an impressive outcome, especially on a night...

James Harden's Freakishness Calls To Mind Some Guys
James Harden right now is like no one else in basketball history in at least this one way: he is taking more combined free throws and three pointers than anyone ever. But don’t take my word for it—here are some cool graphs:...

Damn, Now The Rockets Are Even Losing Their Replacement Dudes
The Rockets are currently missing all of Chris Paul, Clint Capela, and Eric Gordon, three players who together make up roughly 99.9 percent of all the difference-making talent Houston has around James Harden. By rights the Rockets should be dead. That they are not is mostly a testament to Harden’s i...