The Houston Rockets and San Antonio Spurs have a history.
These two franchises battled 20 years ago, in the days of Olajuwon and Robinson. And yet, despite how often they’ve each both made the playoffs, even with all their regular-season battles, these two teams haven’t faced one another in all that time. Until now.
But that doesn’t mean they are unfamiliar with one another. These teams have alre
James Harden has battled the Spurs before, with the Thunder.
Trevor Ariza? He was on the 2008 Lakers team that beat the Spurs in the Western Conference finals. It’s crazy to think Ariza has been in the NBA this long.
And then, of course, there’s Mike D’Antoni, who so often falls short in the playoffs, will look to get over his playoff yips and lead the Rockets to their second Conference Finals appearance in the last three years.
The first-round matchup between Harden and Russell Westbrook stole headlines, but they were fundamentally nearly the same player, offensive maestros conducting almost all the parts themselves. Leonard, however, is a different beast. A scoring machine drenched in efficiency, Leonard is the perfect counter to Harden, right down to his silent demeanor and emphasis on defense.
If Westbrook-Harden was tinged as a philosophical basketball debate between individual accomplishment and contribution to winning, then Harden-Leonard is tapped as individual excellence and star power vs. efficiency supremacy and team success. Suddenly, Leonard is the player who brings more wins to the table, and it’s Harden’s individual contributions that are held up.
It should be noted that Leonard is having the superior playoffs by a healthy margin. Harden has more rebounds and assists, on account of his role and the pace of the Thunder-Rockets series, but Leonard’s efficiency has been leaps and bounds better, both on an individual and team level. Harden shot 41% from the field overall, but 24% from three, where most of the team struggled, shooting around 30% as a team for the series, but still advancing thanks to solid games from Harden early in the series, then help from his friends in Nene(12-12 shooting in game 4) and Lou Williams(19ppg on 48% shooting).
Leonard, while being the primary scoring option for the Spurs, has to also guard Harden for a large portion of the game, so we will see how that extra work, if it does at all, wears him down as the series goes on.
Shockingly, with Leonard on the court this season, Harden averaged 27.4 points per 36 minutes, shooting 49 percent from the field with 11 assists and six turnovers per 36 minutes. More importantly? The Rockets outscored the Spurs by seven points in the 141 minutes they shared the floor. Where the Spurs won the game was when Leonard was not on the court, when the Spurs and Rockets played to a draw in their 4 regular season games. This series, though top heavy with Leonard and Harden, will likely come down to which bench plays better. This should be a very interesting series, to say the least.