The Los Angeles Lakers face off against the Houston Rockets on Saturday night, making them the latest team to try to stop James Harden.
Harden is averaging a cool 42 points per game in his last 18 games, and it’s quite telling that Lakers coach Luke Walton is more focused on containing him in a certain sense than actually stopping him, setting a rather unique goal for his team.
What’s success against James Harden? “Anything under 50 we feel like we succeeded as a group,” Luke Walton says.
— Tania Ganguli (@taniaganguli) January 19, 2019
Harden has scored 57 and 58 points in his last two games. That goal sounds a lot less absurd than it is when take in that context, tongue-in-cheek or not.
Every number and goal set around Harden right now seems improbably lofty, but the guy keeps producing. We’ll see if the Lakers have any luck with their aims, and if it’s enough even if they “succeed.”
