Everybody’s talking about James Harden right now. Some because of his desire to leave the Houston Rockets and join the Brooklyn Nets, and some because they don’t feel like he’s going to get traded any time soon.
The Nets are reportedly being quite aggressive in their pursuit of The Beard, and while some people believe that he couldn’t coexist with Kyrie Irving and Kevin Durant, Ron Artest, also known as Metta World Peace, believes that he should get more respect right now.
The former Lakers star reached out to Brandon ‘Scoop B’ Robinson to discuss several topics, including Harden’s situation. In the interview, Metta went as far as to compare Harden’s scoring runs with Michael Jordan, although he added that MJ was a far superior defender:
“He’s nice. It’s not even a comparison. It’s not like you’re comparing him to LeBron or something like this LeBron or that LeBron, like you got four different LeBrons. This James Harden right here, the last two or three years, there’s no comparison,” Artest said.
“You know he’s just like–this is the BEST James Harden. I don’t even know how old he is. What’s he 32, 33? I mean, he’s done some historic shit. What was he averaging this year? Like 38, 39? That’s MJ shit! But MJ plays way better defense than James Harden,” he added.
Metta World Peace on James Harden: “He’s nice. It’s not even a comparison. It’s not like you’re comparing him to LeBron or something like this LeBron or that LeBron, like you got four different LeBrons. This James Harden right here, the last two or three years, there’s no… pic.twitter.com/hCMRUYk9NP
— 👑 Brandon “Scoop B” Robinson (@ScoopB) November 19, 2020
Well, Metta definitely has a valid point here. Harden is putting up Jordanish numbers as a scorer and no one, not even Kevin Durant, is coming close to him lately. Thus far, he’s won 3 straight Scoring Titles while averaging over 30 points per game for three consecutive seasons.
The knock on Harden has never been the scoring. We know he can score in bunches from all three levels, sometimes at a historically great clip. Hopefully, he’ll be able to translate those numbers into more success in the playoffs, whether it’s in the Rockets or somewhere else.
