How James Harden’s defense gave Pascal Siakam fits inside

James Harden is known best for his offense, but his interior defense gave Toronto star Pascal Siakam problems in a Rockets win at Toronto.

Each NBA season, Rockets star James Harden is a Most Valuable Player (MVP) frontrunner primarily because of his offense. To that point, in Houston’s 14-7 start to the 2019-20 season, he’s again leading the league in scoring at a historic 38.7 points per game.

But in Thursday’s statement win on the road over the defending NBA champion Raptors (15-6), his defense was nearly as valuable.

According to NBA.com’s tracking data, star Toronto forward Pascal Siakam shot just 2-of-8 (25%) when guarded by Harden on 17.7 partial possessions. Both makes were on three-pointers, where the 6-foot-5 Harden lacked the length to disrupt the 6-foot-9 Siakam at all times.

But on the interior, Harden used his strength to keep Siakam off balance in the low post, and he also proved adept at deflecting the ball without fouling. To that point, Siakam did not make a single shot inside the arc when defended by Harden, and he also committed two turnovers.

For the game, Harden set a new season high with five steals.

⁠”He gets overlooked, but he’s one of our better defenders,” Houston head coach Mike D’Antoni said postgame of Harden, who has a uniquely strong and thick physique for an NBA guard.

“A post defender, he’s one of the best in the league,” D’Antoni added. “And then when he’s on somebody he wants to stop ⁠— he carries such a burden sometimes [that] he has lapses, as anybody who gets tired would. But he’s a very good defender. He did it. He took the challenge.”

In 21 games to date, Siakam is averaging 25.0 points per game on 46.4% shooting this season. But thanks in large part to Harden’s defense, the 25-year-old rising star shot just 9-of-22 (40.9%) from the field against the Rockets, and that lower efficiency proved critical in Houston’s 10-point win.

For the season overall, Harden ranks second in the NBA at 0.29 points allowed per possession when defending in the low post. Opponents are shooting just 14.8% against Harden in those settings.

Harden’s especially strong defense against Siakam Thursday may also have been an unintended consequence of the unique defense utilized by the Raptors and head coach Nick Nurse.

Toronto limited Harden to a season-low 11 shot attempts by aggressively forcing the ball out of his hands with early traps and double teams, sometimes nearly at halfcourt. The tradeoff was forcing other Rockets to beat them in four-on-three scenarios, which role players such as Ben McLemore (28 points, eight three-pointers), P.J. Tucker (18 points, five three-pointers) and Danuel House Jr. (16 points) took advantage of.

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But Nurse’s strategy may have also backfired in the sense that it allowed Harden to conserve more energy than usual for his defense.

“I asked him, I said, ‘How [much] do you want to play the first quarter,” D’Antoni said of Harden, via Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle. “He said, ‘Coach, I haven’t done anything. I’m just standing there.’ He was fine. He didn’t get tired at all.”

It’s yet another variable that opposing coaches must consider as they determine just how viable the recent wave of double-teams being sent Harden’s way is over the long run. Quality shooting by role players made the Raptors pay the price on one end, and the extra energy conserved by Harden may have helped the Rockets on the other end, as well.