Thompson: Stephen Curry adds a wrinkle to his defense against James Harden, with good results - The Athletic

The Rockets tried to save their favorite offensive strategy. But trailing Wednesday night against the Warriors in Houston, desperate, they couldn’t help but turn to it.

So James Harden went after Stephen Curry.

Harden is having a scoring season like we haven’t seen in ages. He leads the NBA with an average of 18.6 points per game in isolation. Nobody else averages more than 4.6. Harden spends 49.7 percent of his usage on isolations. Nobody else is above 30.2 percent. For perspective, Kevin Durant, the Warriors’ champion of 1-on-1 basketball, averages 4.1 points per game in isolation, which he turns to 15.9 percent of the time.

Harden is an isolation god.

So when he got Curry in space, the expectation was for it to be curtains.

Instead, we got a symbolic moment, one that signifies why the Rockets can’t seem to get over the Warriors hump. More on that later. And the matchup was not a slaughter. It could have just been an off night...

Thompson: Stephen Curry adds a wrinkle to his defense against James Harden, with good results - The Athletic

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