Gilbert Arenas was a soothsayer.
It was mid-February 2012, some nine months before the Oklahoma City Thunder would shock the basketball world by trading a 23-year-old James Harden to the Houston Rockets as a way of avoiding the league’s luxury tax. And Arenas, the fallen Washington Wizards star whose cautionary tale career would end just a few months later in Memphis, shared his expert opinion on what might lie ahead.
"You've still got James Harden (who was eligible for an extension after that season), who is, to me, the second-most-important player on the team (behind Kevin Durant and ahead of Russell Westbrook),” Arenas told me at the time. “James Harden, he has the basketball mind already. He can get his shot off any time he wants. He doesn't force many shots. And if he plays 40 minutes, he'll be one of the top scorers in the league and an All-Star. If he comes off the bench, it makes it hard to make that case. So his value is higher in my mind than they can afford.”
When news of the Harden deal would break that October, Durant’s reaction said it all.
“Wow,” he tweeted.
Five years later, with the Rockets reaping the benefits of that controversial Thunder move more than ever and Harden having turned in a 60-point, 11-assist, 10-rebound outing on Tuesday night that was the first of its kind in NBA history, Durant’s reaction was on point yet again.
“Damn,” Durant, now enjoying life with the Golden State Warriors, told reporters when he heard. “Goodness gracious.”
What Harden did in that 114-107 win over the Orlando Magic was unprecedented — the first 60-point triple-double in the league's 71 years. But to anyone who has watched Harden’s game grow these past few years, or who never forgot what Arenas predicted, this wasn’t unexpected.
Wilt Chamberlain had never done this (he came close with a 57-point, 13-rebound, 11-assist game), nor had Kareem Abdul-Jabbar (who had just one 50-point triple-double), Michael Jordan (whose best triple-double included “just” 47 points) or even Harden’s old friend from Oklahoma City (Westbrook has three 50-point-plus triple-doubles, which is now tied with Harden for the all-time lead, per basketball-reference.com). The Houston win and the Golden State Warriors’ loss in Utah meant the Rockets (36-13) pulled within three games of the defending champs, all while bringing Harden that much closer to winning his first MVP award.
But back before Harden headed for Houston in search of something more singular, the fascinating thing about Arenas’ one-of-a-kind perspective was that it clearly resonated with Harden at the time. I asked him about what Arenas had to say not long after the interview was published, and his eyes lit up in that child-like kind of way that is impossible to forget.
He was sitting there courtside at the old Arco Arena in Sacramento, tying his shoes one moment and flashing the kind of smile that said it all in the next. Harden knew what kind of player he could become, but the rest of us — Arenas notwithstanding — were slow to figure it all out.
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The fact that Arenas was one of the few people seeing it makes it even more profound, as his wild rise from second-round sensation with the Warriors to “Agent Zero” with the Wizards was grounded far too soon by both injuries and mistakes (the infamous gun incident in 2009) and he was out of the league by the time he was 30. Talent alone is never enough to achieve sustained greatness at this level, even for transcendent scorers like Arenas. As he reminded us, the element of chance and one’s choices will always come into play.
Yet here is the 28-year-old Harden, tops in the league in scoring (30.9 points per game) and third in assists (nine per) for a team that looks fully capable of giving the Warriors a legitimate scare when May rolls around. His huge night against the Magic came with co-star Chris Paul resting a sore groin, and so Harden — who 19 of 30 shots overall, five of 14 three-pointers and 17 of 18 free throws — logged 46 glorious minutes out of sheer necessity. But it’s just one more highlight for the Harden bin, part of a body of work that has him alongside LeBron James as the only players since 2012 to average at least 25 points, five assists and four rebounds per game from then until now.
Arenas called it, alright, from one showman to another.
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