After the Oklahoma City Thunder were knocked out of the playoffs by the Houston Rockets, star James Harden took time to talk about the player who gave him so much trouble in the first-round series, Lu Dort.
“He has the right mindset of just playing hard, ‘Balls to the wall, don’t care what anybody thinks,'” Harden said, according to Rockets Wire. “He’s going to have a great career.”
While Harden averaged 29.7 points in that first-round series and scored more than 30 in five of the seven games, his life on the court was noticeably harder when he was guarded by Dort.
Dort managed to keep up with Harden when moving laterally and limited his fouls. During the regular season, Harden averaged 11.8 free throw attempts per game; in the first-round series, he attempted more than 10 only one time.
“He just played his butt off. He doesn’t care about anything but playing hard,” Harden said. “As a young guy, coming into this league, that’s all you can ask for.”
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Harden also took a moment to reflect on how Dort has grown since their practices together at Arizona State University when the Rockets star would return to his old stomping ground to work with the younger athletes.
“He’s worked his butt off. Even since college, when I would go back to Arizona State, he would work his butt off, and it’s showing,” Harden said. “Learning how to play, and learning defensive schemes and offensive schemes and the total package of being an NBA player is going to come.”
The Rocket Wire’s Ben DuBose contributed to this article.
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