Harden has knack for provoking foes

The drives kept coming Thursday night, with whistles providing the background music like a Civil War bugler sounding the charge until finally James Harden had the Lakers so flummoxed that they were defending with one arm, and sometimes two, tied behind their backs.

This was the Lakers’ choice as Harden’s scoring piled up until he had the fourth 50-point triple-double of his career. But Los Angeles coach Luke Walton said it was not part of the game plan.

The plan was to defend Harden without fouling. But when the Lakers could not get that done, they took to hiding their hands — presumably sacrificing any chance at a steal, deflection or blocked shot — to keep

them from drawing another foul call or protest the many that had been made. By then, it was too late.

“I’ve seen it a couple times,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “We’ve done it a couple times. That’s cute. Doesn’t mean anything. You’re not going to be able to guard him with your hands out or with your hands behind you. Put them any place you want to. It’s not going to happen. They should talk about it. They shouldn’t foul. You walk under a guy, put a foot under, it’s a foul. You know, sorry.”

It’s not just that the Rockets were unsympathetic to the Lakers’ frustrations. They have in Harden a player with an uncanny ability to draw fouls and impact defenders trying to stop him so often they barely notice.

The Lakers were far from the first team to put hands behind backs while defending Harden, a ploy to avoid fouls or send a passive aggressive message to officials. But the Rockets insisted they did not sense any advantage when the Lakers’ anger swelled along with Harden’s statistics.

Forward P.J. Tucker said the complaints were not unusual enough to notice.

“I don’t know,” Tucker said when asked if teams handicap themselves by becoming preoccupied with Harden’s trips to the line. “I don’t think about it. We cry just as much as anybody. And everybody else cries. And everybody thinks other people get the call more than them when they cry all the time. Who cares?”

Harden didn’t. Though the Lakers’ pique seemed clear — LeBron James said later that Harden and Chris Paul effectively “sell calls” — Harden did not find anything unusual. He took 19 free throws in Thursday’s 126-111 victory, matching his season high. But he has long mastered the art of drawing fouls, ranking second to the 76ers’ Joel Embiid in free throws attempted this season after leading the league in the previous four.

“I wasn’t paying attention to it,” Harden said. “I see it everywhere. When someone doesn’t want to pick up a foul, they put their hands behind their back and try to play defense like that.”

Harden has often said he does not try to draw fouls as much as invite contact that gives him an offensive advantage. But on a night like Thursday, when he is living at the line, Harden said he does find teams get caught between the choice of risking foul calls and no longer contesting his shots as aggressively.

“Shots become easier to take,” Harden said.

Few games better captured how he is leading the NBA in scoring for a second consecutive season and on pace to become just the sixth guard to average more than 30 points in consecutive seasons. With his second game of at least 50 points with double-digit assists this season, Harden drove until he found his 3point touch later.

While Harden leads the NBA in 3-pointers, he also is second in drives per game, averaging 18.2, just .3 behind the Spurs’ DeMar DeRozan. He started slowly from deep Thursday, making one of his first six attempts. But when he got the drive going, he believed the 3-pointers would follow.

“I work on it every day, so I always have confidence to shoot my shot,” Harden said.

D’Antoni did not need to see those early drives, or even the first-quarter 3pointer hit through a Josh Hart foul, to be confident Harden might have one of those nights. D’Antoni acknowledged it does not always work out as he expects, as the Rockets’ 13-14 record demonstrates. But he has grown accustomed to Harden’s exploits.

“I start to feel good when he starts to put his tennis shoes on before the game,” D’Antoni said. “Then I start to feel like, ‘Oh, we’ve got a good chance tonight.’

“It doesn’t surprise me, thank goodness. He’s really good. He had a great game. He had it going, obviously. I think that’s the beauty, also, between Chris and James. When one’s got it really cooking or doing something the other team has a hard time with, they keep exploiting it unless something changes.”

Nothing changed beyond the Lakers’ decision to hide their hands and offer carefully worded protests later.

Asked if Harden had gotten into the Lakers’ heads, D’Antoni would not make that assumption.

“I don’t know about that,” he said. “I do know that James Harden gets fouled. That’s just what happens.”