A Top 5 Pick? I Don't Know About That

Let me first state, for the record, that sites like DraftExpress.com and NBADraft.net are fun only on a purely cursory level.

Get an idea of who is going where in the draft in a given year, have some fun with their ridiculous prediction about your favorite team not in the lottery (rendering their opinions entirely useless), and read over the NBA comparisons for your favorite college players.

As a quick aside, the comparisons on NBADraft.net seem to always follow a similar pattern, which is that the two people being compared more often than not look like one another.  Check it out.  Or here.  (Maybe not so much here).

But, that last one brings me to the point of this post, James Harden.

The Pac-10 player of the year has drawn comparisons to everyone from Baron Davis to Manu Ginobili to Jason Terry.  Even though he lead the conference in scoring and shot near 50% from the field, probably the most important stat the sophomore could boast about were his shots per game.  Harden averaged just under 13 attempts a game, truly incredible when you consider he scored over 20 a contest.  

All this was well and good.  Until last week.

Now, I'm not one to trash a guy based on two tournament games, or say that he won't ever be any good based solely on a few contests.  However, any team drafting in the top 5 with ideas of taking this guy has to be thinking twice.

Passive wouldn't even begin to describe the way Harden played.  Against Temple in the first round, Harden made only one field goal all game (and it came in the second half).  His next game (and possibly his last as a Sun Devil, though he's being quiet on that front as of now) wasn't much better.  Scoring only 10 points in a loss to Syracuse, Harden was largely uninvolved, passive, and seemingly uninterested in taking shots, going to the rim, or taking over.  You know that he can do it, he just didn't seem like he either cared to or wanted to.  

Skill level doesn't seem to be an issue with Harden, at least from what I've seen.  He won't be in the dunk contest any time soon, and he's certainly not an Olympian as far as athleticism is concerned.  But, he can shoot, he can get to the hole, and he can fill it up efficiently (something not often seen nowadays...cough O.J. Mayo cough).  All that said, if he doesn't have the killer instinct, a top 5 pick could a bit high.

It may be that James Harden picked the worst possible time to have three of his worst games of his college career (Pac-10 championship, and those 1st two rounds of the NCAAs).  But, on the other hand, this passive play and lack of (ugh, I hate to say it, the cliche police should arrest me right this second) heart could be a more realistic indicator of what a team can expect from him.

I won't completely write Harden off just yet.  But I will say that he can't get by on simply "being good" in the NBA because, quite honestly, he isn't that much better than anyone at the next level.  I hope for his sake he's not as apathetic as he's looked in his last 3 games.