PHILADELPHIA — If there was any doubt about the rejuvenated state of James Harden’s 33-year-old body, it disappeared with 6:30 left in the second quarter of the Sixers’ 121-101 win over the Nets on Saturday afternoon. It was at that moment that Harden unleashed a stepback move so strong and instantaneous that it knocked Nets guard Spencer Dinwiddie a full five feet backwards simply from the change of direction. By the time Dinwiddie could recover, Harden was already elevating into his jumpshot, a smooth 26-footer that caught nothing but net and gave the Sixers a seven point lead.
It was a small moment against an overmatched opponent whom few will remember by the end of this postseason. But it was important for what it showed. This year, the Sixers have a player who can actually do the things that Harden is supposed to do.
Really, you saw it throughout the Sixers’ brilliant offensive performance against the Nets. He scored 23 points, attempted 21 shots, sank seven of his 13 attempts from 3-point range. In short, he was a difference-maker, the kind of player who can carry a team for long stretches of a postseason game, a legitimate primary scorer whose presence greatly reduced the need for Joel Embiid to carry a full load.
Is Harden the same player he was when he was a perennial MVP candidate and the Rockets were a perennial title contender? No, probably not. You can see that in his struggles to make plays in traffic and finish at the rim. But he is a heck of a lot closer to being his old self than he was at any point during last year’s playoff run.
The biggest example of this is his ability to execute that stepback jumper, a move that accounted for close to half his attempts from the field when he was at his peak. More than 83% of his makes from that range were unassisted. Compare that to last year’s playoffs, when a lingering hamstring injury sapped Harden of the core strength required to execute quick-twitch change-of-direction moves. In the Sixers’ two postseason series, he attempted just 6.3 3s per game, with nearly 30% of his makes coming off of assists.
“Not being in great shape in the playoffs is not a great place to be,” Sixers head coach Doc Rivers said earlier this week, “because everybody’s running it at their maximum level of physicality and mentally and if you’re not, it’s gonna go well for you. Anyone and so James found that out last year.”
If Game 1 was any indication, Harden isn’t going to have that problem this time around.
A few other quick takeaways from the Sixers’ win:
1) Jayson Tatum’s mouth is going to be watering like it’s dinner time when he watches the tape of Mikal Bridges’ first-half performance. The former Villanova star is thriving in his new role as a primary ballhandler and the Sixers spent most of the first two quarters trying to figure out a way to slow him down. Bridges scored 23 points in a first half in which he was consistently able to get himself to practically any spot on the court without any trouble at all. He punctuated the performance with a five-point flurry in the closing minutes of the second quarter, throwing down a thunderous tomahawk dunk off the dribble and, later, picking up an old-fashioned three-point play with an off-balance layup and foul.
It’s going to be interesting to see how well the Sixers can adjust to Bridges over the course of this series. They did a decent job of it in the second half of Saturday’s win, but he still finished the afternoon with 30 points on 12-of-18 shooting. That doesn’t bode particularly well for a defense that has a second round matchup looming against Tatum and the Celtics.
2) Any time Jaden Springer gets minutes in a postseason game, it’s a sign that things have gone relatively well. By the time the second-year player checked into Game 1 with a minute-and-a-half left, the Sixers were up by 23 points on the back of a supremely well-rounded offensive performance. The Sixers shot 21 of 42 from 3-point range, with seven different players knocking down a 3 in the game’s first 13 minutes. Nine different players finished the game with at least five points.
3) There’s a lack of athleticism among the Sixers' starting five that they’ll need to make up for elsewhere in a seven-game series against a team like the Celtics. You saw it early in the first quarter against the Nets. They missed five shots at the rim in the first six minutes of the game, including trio of missed layups from Harden, one of them blocked by current Net and former Villanova star Bridges. That said, P.J. Tucker’s postseason impact is real. There was a nine-minute stretch in the first half where the veteran wing grabbed three offensive rebounds. He attempted just six shots, but knocked down a couple of corner 3s, which will be a critical element of the Sixers’ success as the postseason progresses.
