When James Harden first arrived in his hometown of Los Angeles last fall, he unintentionally went viral with his "I'm not a system player, I am a system" comments. What was a simple explanation to a question about coaching turned into an internet sensation overnight. Fans and haters of Harden went wild with the quote, and it sparked weeks worth of conversation through the ups and downs of the Clippers' season at the time.
The truth is, Harden will always be a controversial player when it comes to all-time discussions because he has never won a championship. No one will argue with his placement as one of the top scorers of a generation and all-time, but the discussions around his legacy will always at some level have to involve his postseason losses as well. With all that said, is it possible that we are still collectively underrating Harden?
If we look at the big picture, Harden has only contributed to winning basketball teams all throughout his career. He has never finished a season playing with a team that earned a losing record overall, and the only time he ended a year with a non-winning team was with the 2015-16 Houston Rockets, who went 41-41.
Harden has never played on a losing team
We now have a sample size of more than 15 seasons with which to judge Harden's contributions to winning and what kind of ceiling and floor raiser he is. It is safe to say that having James Harden on your team means that you are going to have a winning culture and you are going to have a great chance of going to the playoffs at the end of the season, regardless of what other players you roster.
At a certain point, things stop being a coincidence, and start becoming a logical trend. Harden has not played on winning teams throughout his whole career by happenstance. Rather, his on-court contributions and his off-court impact have collectively made him someone who brings winning basketball with him wherever he goes.
This is basically the dream for any player in the NBA. Of course you want to win a championship above anything, but having such good habits and such notable talent that you can cultivate a winning team wherever you put on a jersey must be a crazy feeling.
Harden may not be considered the best player of a generation, but he has more than proven he can make any NBA team into a winner.