This Is The Move James Harden Spent His Summer Developing

James Harden teased a new, never-before-seen offensive move over the summer, something he’d been working on and perfecting this offseason, something that would be so intricate and unexpected that our poor, simple, obsolete brains would automatically assume what we’d seen must’ve been some kind of traveling violation. Considering how infuriating the rest of Harden’s offensive repertoire is, this was a fair bet to reach a new level of annoying.

Harden broke out the move Monday night against the Shanghai Sharks of the Chinese Basketball Association, in the first exhibition of the NBA preseason schedule. It is a testament to Harden’s brilliance as an offensive player that he didn’t have anything better to work on this season than a one-legged step-back jumper, which can only be an improvement over his regular step-back jumper in extremely rare circumstances:

It looks like it might involve a travel, but anyway it’s sort of cool and daring, and will only become annoying as Harden develops it into another unstoppable weapon, and then starts methodically adding steps.