Los Angeles Clippers’ James Harden Brutally Ripped By NBA Analyst

There was a time when Los Angeles Clippers guard James Harden was widely viewed as one of the best players in the NBA, but those days are long gone.

Harden has become somewhat of a punchline in 2024, thanks much in part to his jarring lack of playoff success.

Now, Harden is absorbing yet another jab.

Bleacher Report’s Grant Hughes compiled a list of the five most overrated players in the NBA across the last five years, and Harden ranked at the very top.

“The Clippers offloaded two first-rounders (one via the Oklahoma City Thunder) and an additional swap to onboard Harden after an ugly holdout in Philadelphia,” Hughes wrote. “That’s an overwhelming amount of positive value for a player who isn’t anywhere close to what he was with the Rockets and cannot be trusted to stay satisfied wherever he happens to be.”

Harden is coming off of a 2023-24 campaign in which he played 72 games and averaged just 16.6 points per game, his lowest output since his second year in the league back in 2010-11. He was still efficient, registering a true-shooting percentage of 61.2 percent, but it’s blatantly obvious that the 35-year-old is on a steep decline.

To make matters worse, Harden was eliminated from the first round of the playoffs, as the Clippers lost to the Dallas Mavericks in six games.

What Has Happened to James Harden?

During his days with the Rockets, Harden was one of the NBA’s most dynamic scorers. He won three straight scoring titles between 2017-18 and 2019-20, topping out at 36.1 points per game in 2018-19. He won an MVP award in the first year of that run.

Harden’s style has always grated on the nerves of many basketball fans, with the shifty veteran largely being accused of foul baiting throughout his career.

As Harden has aged and his first step has dissipated, the once-elite scorer is now essentially a shell of what he once was. You still see that old Houston version in there for spurts, but most of the time, that MVP candidate just isn’t there anymore. The perfect evidence of that is in his free-throw rate, which has dipped tremendously over the last several years.

James Harden re-signed with the Los Angeles Clippers on a two-year, $70 million deal this summer, which is a contract that may not age particularly well for Los Angeles.

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