Durant A Superhero, But Not Super Human

'Holy snapped meniscus Batman!'

Much has been written about Kevin Durant’s recent superhero efforts in keeping his Oklahoma City Thunder team within striking distance of the Memphis Grizzlies in their western conference semi final series.

But Kevin Durant is not superman; he is far more human than that.

No, if we are going to hyperbolise his wonderful, yet so far futile, efforts with super hero epithets I’m much more comfortable with a Batman comparison where Durant is concerned.

In the world of super heroes Batman is unique.

He has no superpowers, no strange skills developed after being bitten by a particular insect or hit by a nuclear ray gun, nor any supernatural ability to control the elements.

Batman has his muscle, his intellect and the skills he has learnt. Batman is fallible to emotion and can be, with great difficulty, contained. Batman is human and adjusts to situations accordingly.

And in Robin, Batman also has willing and capable sidekick who always has the dark knight’s back. 
He has the ability to keep bad guys guessing with quick decisions that defer the attention away from his more illustrious partner.

Kevin Durant is OKC’s Batman, and Russell Westbrook is their Robin.

Despite the well-publicised and controversial trade of fan favourite James Harden, the dynamic duo of Durant and Westbrook led the Thunder to a 60-win season, a record bettered only by the champion Miami Heat.

The two had seemingly worked their on-court relationship into a cohesive marriage that helped settle a Thunder family still trying to come to terms with the loss of a favourite son in Harden.

Kevin Martin was adopted as Harden’s replacement, and while his skill set was deemed somewhat inferior to the bearded swingman, his offensive production was seen as an adequate enough fall back for the exploits of OKC’s superhero pairing.

The 2013 season was all going to plan until ‘holy torn meniscus, batman’, Westbrook got injured (Westbrook had not missed a competitive game of basketball in high school, college or five years in the NBA; truly a superhuman effort!).

Aside from the significant 23 points, 7 assists and 5 rebounds he was giving in production, Westbrook would be sorely missed as being the fall back guy, the effective sidekick to Kevin Durant’s scoring superhero.

He could divert the attention of any teams defence, freeing up Durant to either play facilitator or receiver, or vice versa.

But Batman is now on his own and in the absence of his lightning quick sidekick, Durant has stepped up production and borne a much heavier load.

Kevin Durant wanted to do more for his Thunder teammates. Indeed Kevin Durant needed to more for his Thunder teammates.

So it is certainly a strange situation when a player who is averaging 32 points, 9 boards and 6 assists in a series needed to find even more if they were to win.

But for all his ludicrous ability and otherworldly play during this playoff series against the Grizzlies, it is these very efforts that have highlighted the Thunder’s current deficiencies.

Towards the end of their previous series, ironically against the lost son James Harden’s Houston Rockets, it was already becoming increasingly difficult to see where the support would be for the Thunder’s scoring champion.

In the past, if teams had shut out both Westbrook and Durant, Harden would ably step in to fill the vacuum with his talent for shot creation and facilitation often proving a lethal combination.

Oh how General Manager Sam Presti must now want his own time machine like Uncle Rico in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’.

But Harden is gone and Westbrook is on crutches, so surely someone else could help out?

Aforementioned Martin is a scorer and a reliable perimeter shooter, but in terms of creating his own shot he is an artist that is devoid of ideas, an issue that has come to the fore since Westbrook’s absence.

The Thunder big man Serge Ibaka, a player averaging 13 points per game in the regular season, has been as cold as a mother-in-law’s kiss throughout the first three games. He has even found a way to miss his stock-in-trade under-the-ring lay ups and 12-foot jumpers.

Durant could be forgiven for thinking the Joker himself was at play; such has been comedic efforts of many of his teammates.

But Durant also must lay claim to some of the blame.

His shot selection and ball control late in Game 4 overtime left much to be desired. He turned the ball over at a crucial stage in Game 4 overtime trying to force a shot that probably was not there.

But even these criticisms must be tempered with the uniqueness of Durant’s situation.

It can be argued that these late game issues could all lead back to the fact Durant is a man trying to be everything to everyone on this team.

The Grizzlies know this and played Durant out of his comfort zone, trusting in his teammates’ lack of confidence to step up and get the job done.

Unfortunately for Durant OKC now find themselves in 1-3 hole against a Grizzlies team who pride themselves on tough defence and sharing the ball on the offensive end.

Durant has been a superhero so far in this series, though a mere mortal can only do so much. Unfortunately for him it will now take a super human effort to see his team through and keep their title hopes alive.

A Sweet and Soward Relationship

Soward looking.... well sour.  source: Daily Telegraph

On any given Sunday a successful St George-Illawarra side is met with a slew of witty and cheeky slogans held aloft on the hills of Jubilee and Win Stadiums.

One of the most prominent, simple and eloquently constructed reads ‘Sweet and Soward’.
Right now that sign drips with a sweet and sour irony.

The banner, held up as support for the soon to be former Dragons five-eighth’s sweet play, could also represent the soured relationship the premiership winning half must now have with a club he only recently vowed to never play against.

Penrith fans will now want written confirmation of Jamie’s availability before every Dragons v Panthers game, because Soward is now a chocolate soldier, liquorice all sort, a Panther.

I must admit, Soward’s exit from the Dragons took me by surprise; seldom do clubs let go of premiership players without putting up a fight.

The apparent lack of enthusiasm shown by club chiefs in negotiating Soward’s contract is a sad way for what was a beautiful and fruitful relationship to end.

To be wanted by a club you love and offered the money you know you deserve must be a fulfilling and proud experience; so to be obviously unwanted by a club you love must be heartbreaking.

Soward was a player maligned by opposition fans but taken under the wing of the Dragon faithful through his obvious passion for a team that allowed him that most Australian of tropes; a fair go.

He was a huge factor in the Dragons run to the 2010 title under the guidance of Wayne Bennett. Soward’s style of play was masterfully worked into a Bennett system that saw his considerable strengths in kicking and organising come glowingly to the fore.

During those heady Bennett days Soward’s confidence grew on the back of a coach’s belief and a playing style tailor-made for his abilities.

In that brief, Bennett-run era success seemed omnipresent.

Soward, as the team’s number six, could rightfully lay claim to a significant slice of the winners’ pie. An influential player in a team feeding success to two merged clubs that had been starved of the ultimate prize.

But now the affair is over, and a new suitor from the southern climes is about to ride into Dragon town to assume the role as saviour of the big red V.

The tone of Dragons fans’ reactions to Soward’s departure is one of the strangest aspects to this episode of an unfortunately-timed annual horse-trading season the NRL refuses to fix.

(Surely a rule should be brought in to stop mid-season signings [not trades] for the following year, an absurd and ridiculous situation embarrassingly unique to the NRL.)

Fan forums are hot bed of hyperbole, hope and more than occasionally vitriol, but the signing of Gareth Widdop from the Storm seemed to have left Dragons fans largely unmoved by the departure of Soward.

It is as if the whole exchange was viewed as a fortunate step forward; Soward representing the adequate economy class ticket, Widdop the more desirable, business class upgrade.

But is Widdop’s signing the answer or just another question in the club’s seemingly obsessive search for a long-term playmaker?

To anoint Widdop as the saviour of the Dragons much maligned and often-benign attack is at best unfair and at worst bloody minded; a potential sacrifice to the god of instant results.

Widdop may be a harder head and more willing to place it in positions of dubious safety, but he is untested as a marquee player, having spent all of his time in the NRL playing alongside Melbourne’s big three and flourishing under Craig Bellamy’s tutelage.

Widdop’s well earned and significant reputation has largely been built around his running game and a sound defence, not the sleight of hand or high class kicking game the Dragons seem to want out of skilled pivot.

The Storm five-eighth is a class player with plenty of big game experience and if any number six has a chance of making a positive impact in a new, more responsible and high-pressure role it would be the Northern Englishman/Melbournian.

But there is no doubting the challenges Widdop faces in coming to a club that seems desperate for a creative, take control kind of five-eighth.

Foremost among these challenges is the knowledge that Widdop is replacing a passionate premiership-winning player who was effectively shown the door by a club with which he felt a close affinity through the opportunities they had afforded.

Dragons’ fans obviously hope the man to slip into Soward’s vacated number six jersey will enjoy the same sweet success the head-geared pivot had wearing the red V.

If he doesn’t, the fans may see yet another great red and white hope become the victim of a soured relationship.

How I Learned To Believe In The Knicks

A friend once said to me that listening to people recount their dreams is like being stuck in an elevator with Forrest Gump; a person telling you stories about a make-believe life you know nothing about and have little care for.

But last night I had a dream that has forced me to ignore this pearl of wisdom to regale you with how I became convinced that the New York Knicks could beat the Miami Heat in the Eastern Conference Finals.

It involved former New York Knicks big man Patrick Ewing, current Knicks big man Tyson Chandler, actors from a 90′s American sitcom, a hot dog and a pair of stone washed knee length jeans.

This dream began with me sitting on a Central Park bench that was a picture of pure New York perfection.

Sucking down a chilli dog, I watched as Courtney Cox and David Schwimmer rowed a boat on the calm waters of Central Park Lake.

The charming repartee of these two TV siblings reminded me of all those zany ‘friends’ and how much I loathed that show.

I shouted something that couldn’t be repeated in a 7.30 timeslot, then looked down at my stone washed jeans that had been cut off at the knees, shrugged my shoulders and continued eating my hot dog.

Just when I thought the 90′s redux couldn’t get any more embarrassing or irrelevant, Schwimmer asked if he could have some of my hot dog.

It was about this time I almost convinced myself to wake up.

Then Patrick Ewing arrived. 

The legendary New York Knick big man of the 90′s sidled up to the bench I was sitting on, bent down and softly whispered “remember 99.”

“Why?” I asked.

He just flashed his seven-footer smile and calmly pointed in the direction of a burning Tim Hardaway Miami Heat jersey.

Reflected in the smoke haze was footage of Allan Houston’s last second game five winner from the 1999 Knicks first round playoff series victory against the Miami Heat.

That 1999 series was only the second time in NBA history that a number eight seeded playoff team (the Knicks) had defeated a number one ranked team (the Heat), and would cement the Heat versus Knicks rivalry that continues through to today.

As I looked back Ewing, ‘the beast of the east’, suddenly morphed into the modern day Knick middleman and part time fashionista Tyson Chandler.

Strange things happen in dreams, but the strangest thing was yet to come, as Tyson was about to convince me that the Knicks could beat the Heat in 2013. He did so by comparing his former team’s, the Dallas Mavericks, marvellous run to the title in 2011 with his current team, the 2013 New York Knicks.

In the 2011 finals Chandler and his Mavs defeated the first incarnation of the modern day Miami Heat and its equal parts fabled and maligned ‘big three’.
 
He waxed lyrical about a scorer of elite talent in Dirk Nowitzki, a man that at times during that 2011 series looked like he was playing alone in the yard, such was the ease with which he got his shots.
Carmelo Anthony will fill a similar role should New York meet Miami in this year’s Eastern Conference finals.

Anthony is the 2013 scoring champion and an out and out bucket filler. Like Nowitzki he has the ability to spread any defence with an innate ability to get to his spots.

Miami, like most teams, have this year found it hard to match-up on Carmelo and this will obviously be a massive plus for New York throughout any potential Miami match-up.
 
Chandler also reminded me that his teammate at the Knicks, Jason Kidd, was also a teammate during the Dallas run to the championship.

An exceptional leader, Kidd has successfully morphed himself from a pass first assist machine into spot up shooter of the highest order.

His championship experience and leadership with the Knicks second unit will be invaluable in trying to stop a Heat side that has improved markedly since that heady 2011 series.

And he saved special mention to the man known as Jet.

Jason ‘Jet’ Terry was a sixth man in name only, averaging 18 points off the bench during the 2011 finals series, and was able to create space for Dirk and others by spreading the Miami defence.
In JR Smith, a sixth man scorer averaging 18 points, the Knicks have a player that can potentially assume this Jason Terry style scoring punch off the bench.

This is provided that JR can keep a cool head and his mind on his allocated role, something that is not a given where an inked up Smith is involved.

I agreed that offensively the Knicks match-up well against the Heat, but mentioned that I thought it will be their defence that has to fire in order to check the devastating scoring ability of the Heat’s big one (LeBron) plus two (Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh).

Chandler then went on to mention something about his fashion tastes and love of capes before reminding me of his not insignificant defensive basketball ability. In fact, Chandler is probably the X-factor for New York, the biggest piece of a potentially Heat busting Knicks puzzle.

With a healthy Chandler anchoring the Knicks defence, Miami will have difficulty penetrating the paint as they did in the 2011 finals when an exceptional defensive performance by Chandler stymied the attack of the Heat.

The Heat still have no one that can effectively match-up with Chandler and will rely on LeBron and Wade’s ability to attack the rim to force the Knicks big man into foul trouble early, something the Heat have improved on since 2011.

My dream ended as David Schwimmer stole a bite from my hot dog, fashion savvy Tyson Chandler told me he liked my shorts and Ewing reappeared and asked me to “believe” as he sauntered off into the darkness past the charred remains of Tim Hardaway’s Heat jersey.

I woke up with reinforced disdain for mid 90′s sitcoms, a curious interest in rediscovering stone wash denim, a strange craving for hot dogs and a new belief that the Knicks may be the one team in the NBA that have the players, system and ability to upset LeBron and the Miami Heat.
Well, in my dreams anyway.

Could Starc Be Australia's Ironman In India?

Ironman Starc*

                         * (image has been altered i.e. Starc is not actually Ironman)
Not since a country kid from Narromine nicknamed pigeon answered the call for wickets during the then fiery furnace known as the 1994 West Indies cricket tour have Australia needed a bowling superhero to step forward and make the world take notice.

Could Mitchell Starc be that hero?

While you must win with spin if India is to be conquered, pace is not without its place.

In 2004 an Australian team that included Shane Warne, the spin king on a baked beans and vegemite toast diet, still had to rely on their pace brigade to stifle the locals and win a series in India for only the second time in 30 years.

Sure, that team included Jason Gillespie and the aforementioned Glenn McGrath, a duo considered the best Australian pace combination since Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson.

For better or worse, Australia’s bowling strength still lies in our pace attack.

And this is where the early damage can be done to a potentially dangerous though brittle looking Indian batting card.

And like his superhero namesake in Tony Stark, Mitchell may need to become the Ironman wicket taker of this tour.

Starc is coming off the kind of summer that pop songs are written about. It was a glaringly rose coloured, heady season where success came in all forms of the game.

The Beach Boys could not have penned a more pure summer of enjoyment.

But if Australia represents a Beach Boys sweet summer paradise for pace men, India is the atonal dark and dingy Jazz club opposite.

India in India is an entirely different, much more difficult and much less harmonious and melodic task.

The wickets will no doubt be slowed to a pace more akin to bowling on sand and the flat, low Indian conditions are as heartbreaking to quick bowlers as a flat ocean is for surfers.

Indeed India will challenge Starc and his fellow pace exponents who all, like Will Ferrel in Talladega Nights, ‘just want to go fast’.

But Michael Clarke and his fellow selectors should place Starc at the vanguard of this challenge.

Australia will need the bulk of overs and a more than fair share of wickets rotated through Xavier Doherty, Nathan Lyon and Glenn Maxwell or Steve Smith.

Though Australia still need an effective initial attack that could hopefully make early inroads into a batting line-up that has recently done its best Violet Crumble impersonations when faced with the Aussie quicks.

It’s the way bowlers shatter batsmen that matters and Starc as the Australian Ironman should be given a chance at the first hammer blow.

The flat decks of the sub continent will not let balls out of their dusty grasp without back breaking effort, but Starc’s natural combination of height and pace should still have an early effect and rattle many top order bats.

And as Ian Chappell has pointed out, Starc’s natural movement into right-handed batsmen will trouble the likes of the erratically brilliant Virender Sehwag and the rising Virat Kohli. These are two players that Australia need to keep in check if they are to keep India’s totals from resembling Sydney housing prices.

But Australia also needs a pure wicket taker, and at the moment Starc is possibly the most dangerous one they have.

A lot will depend on the ability of Starc to get the voodoo-esque mystery of reverse swing happening in his favour, not to mention the small matter of being selected in this bowler rotating, trigger happy world we live.

But if he does get on the park, as I believe he should, he could be the one to call out the ‘win with spin’ truism as the lie Australia need it to be.

This current series in India looms as a challenging litmus test for Mitchell Starc. And if successful it could define the career trajectory of one of Australia’s most exciting pace prospects.

The Look of LeBron

LeBron steps back to shoot over KD. Image ESPN

LeBron James has many game faces. There’s the ‘wow, you call that a foul’ face, the ‘wow, you didn’t call that a foul' face, the ‘wow, you really shouldn’t guard me’ face and the most common ‘wow, did I just make that inhumanly awesome shot…. again?’ face.

But in the recent show down with Kevin Durant’s Oklahoma City Thunder LeBron produced one face that this writer has never seen.

It came towards the end of the second quarter of a contest that had already become as flat and tasteless as a fat free rice cracker.

Like said cracker the Thunder had crumbled under the weight of basketballs most immense talent and would never pick up the crumbs.

The face? Well it appeared after James hit a step back jumper over Kevin Durant with 1:40 to go in the quarter.

The look said ‘this is normal! Its just what I do’ and it marked the evolution of the most dangerous side to a Superman that for all intents and purposes could come from another universe, such is his current level of play.

If opponents hoped that LeBron’s kryptonite would prove to be complacency, born out of a comfort for delivering Miami the promised keys to the NBA Kingdom, the evidence of this recent form suggests they will be left hopeless.

The face I saw was of a player who not only believes in his ability, but also  believes that this ability has plenty of improving to do.

Complacency does not live in King James’ castle.

And this was no performance made against an also ran team looking for a free seat at the draft lottery.

This was King James’ schooling the heir apparent, the ‘Durantula’ as he is known, who is desperately trying to set up his band of Thunder marauders for an attempted invasion of the Kingdom.

But the title that LeBron and the rest of his merry men from Miami guard with such suffocating efficiency will not be conquered without a King James like immortal effort.

It is an effort that right now seems beyond Durant and the Thunder, as well as just about every other pretender in the NBA.

Like upstart little siblings the entire league is literally being held at an arms length by an overbearing and more gifted big brother.

Individually LeBron is kidding everyone, even himself, with the ease he is scoring, passing and defending.

LeBron glides around the court doing literally everything with such dominant ease that to call basketball second nature is to sell his ability short. He is leading his team in points, rebounds, assists, steals and field goal percentage

Basketball is first nature to James.

As Matt Dollinger, writing in Sports Illustrated, so succinctly puts it ‘Miami's shortcomings become irrelevant when LeBron is playing like this.’

Miami’s shortcomings are several, but most of them are negligible when the teams best player is playing in such a rarefied air he could be in danger of suffocating.

At present James is proving as un-guardable as Steve McQueen in the Great Escape, in fact an army may be the only way to confine King James and his Heat teammates as he leads them towards another NBA title.

The ‘this is normal! Its just what I do’ face was so dangerous in its intensity that upon witnessing it another face of inevitability flashed before my eyes.

While its still too early to be sure, that vision looked a lot like LeBron’s ‘wow, we just won it all…again!’ face reflected in the Larry O'Brien trophy.

A Masters Last Blast?

My wife (middle left of the screen, not the dude in the singlet) celebrating India's World Cup win in 2011.

From standing on the outside looking in there seems 3 major foundations that the current Indian test team will build around during the coming series against Australia.

The first is the characteristic tortoise paced pitches. These graveyards are littered with the exhausted bones of pace men both past and present and the Indians hope they will have enough space for a few more.

The second is Harbhajan taking wickets, which he does so against Australia with particular aplomb (as well as doing or saying something irritating. Or both!)

The third is Sachin Tendulkar.

Unfortunately for both Indian and world cricket it seems that one of these pillars is crumbling faster than said sub continental pitches, and it’s not Harbhajan’s wicket taking ability.

Last summer Tendulkar arrived in Australia amidst a fever hotter than a murg saagwala.

The anticipation of the little masters looming 100^th hundred drew out fans from all over the nation. People would pack their cricket lunches over conversations on whether or not today would be the day.

Those conversations went on for 4 months and were never satisfied.

Tendulkar, while not statistically failing in the series, nonetheless failed to reach a career milestone in a significant cricketing contest for what seemed to be the first time (it must be reminded that he subsequently made his 100^th hundred in a ODI versus Bangladesh.)

And while the excitement may have outstripped the potential achievement, the disappointment in Tendulkar’s inability to deliver in one of crickets highest profile contests hinted at what hard times lay ahead.

Like a waning Kung Fu master still trying to see off a younger apprentice, 2012 may prove to be the year Tendulkar’s stone was finally taken from his hand.

From January through to December last year Tendulkar averaged just 22 runs in 16 innings, a record that is hard to draw comparisons to because there has seldom been a top order player that has survived long enough to have one similar.

But there has seldom been a player like Tendulkar and this is precisely why he continues to play.

India will never drop the man considered the greatest since Bradman. And his overall career statistics and public popularity suggests doing so would be akin to sacking Santa Claus.

But eventually even Santa Claus is shown up to be to a figment of your imagination, and you move on with memories of the good times that no longer exist.

Tendulkar’s form has gone the way of a memory, one that has been lost for a while and that all of India would dearly love to regain. But on current form this seems as unlikely as Harbhajan keeping his rather pointed opinions to himself.

Tendulkar has exceeded 30 runs just once since January of last year. Less a dry spell than a full-blown Martian drought. As alien a predicament that Tendulkar has ever found himself in.

And while you could never write off a player who has made more centuries than anyone else, this recent record suggests Tendulkar may be heading towards a similar elongated, heartbreaking and inevitable end as that of Australia’s own grand master, Ricky Ponting.

At some point in the near future Father Time’s incessant knocking on Tendulkar’s fortified door will become irresistible.

Tendulkar is a great cricketer but he is only a man amongst (younger) men.

Like Ricky Ponting before him Tendulkar’s record and contribution to Indian, and indeed global, cricket deserves more than a slow disintegration into irrelevancy.

Neil Young once sang, its better to burn out than fade away.

If this is to be Tendulkar’s final series, it would be fitting for there to be one last spark. A final burning innings the master blaster can sear onto the memories of his millions of fans.

Fear The Beard-less Thunder?

The apple of the eyes of beard fearing Rockets fans

When Oklahoma City announced in October that they were trading away their celebrated 6^th man and cult hero James Harden, more than a few eyebrows, and dare I say beards, were raised. After all ‘fear the beard’ became one of the monikers for Oklahoma’s run to 2012 NBA Finals.

Throughout last season Harden grew into a formidable scorer and facilitator that could be relied upon to create not only for himself but for others, especially those in the Thunder’s ’2^nd’ unit. His cult status was born out of a combination of this searingly effective talent and a bountiful beard, one that promised to keep Oklahoma’s novelty facial hair sellers employed for years.

However there had been rumblings from as early as 2010 that the Thunder were approaching their own version of the fiscal cliff.

Harden and fast improving big man Serge Ibaka were both coming up for contract renewals and it was correctly speculated that the Thunder would be unable to keep both on their already bulging payroll.

Indeed Harden would go on to have the kind of season that guarantees max contracts while Ibaka would also put in a solid case for a similarly ludicrous amount of cash. Who would be the one to go? Many observers, including this writer, opined that the most obvious and slightly less painful decision would be to keep Harden, and move Ibaka on.

I for one had no thoughts of Harden leaving the Thunder; there just seemed no sense in such a move. Yes Ibaka has proven elite defensive skills and an improving and evolving offensive skill set. Yes Ibaka is the kind of big man that many GM’s would sell there first born for.

But Harden was something special. An out and out offensive assassin that has the talent to lead most other teams in the NBA, but was being used with deadly effect coming off the bench behind fellow offensive killers in Durant and Westbrook.

In fact, I even believed that the Thunder may choose to offload Russell Westbrook in order to keep both Harden and Ibaka, and make a play for a competent free agent point guard that could play the role of a pass first, pass second facilitator to Harden and Durant.

All of us that thought any of these thoughts were wrong. But are we still right?

Harden did end up being traded in a ‘blockbuster’ move to the Houston Rockets that included the very good Kevin Martin landing in Thunder land to take on the scoring responsibilities vacated by the vetted bearded one. Ibaka was re-signed to a beard shakingly large contract and many of us scratched our facial hair with confusion.

Houston novelty beard sellers rejoice!

Harden was on his way to Houston riding a max deal that would see him pair up with Jeremy Lin’sanity’ and take on a starting role at the 2. For Harden it seemed like a positive move, what with a max deal and a starting role that will give him a huge amount of scoring responsibility. The beard could indeed work on being feared from the outset.

Sam Presti, the GM in Oklahoma, could have been forgiven for jumping at bearded shadows as the 2012/13 season got underway. Harden exploded out of the blocks and after 3 efforts with the Rockets was averaging the better part of 30 points and seemingly making the trade a compelling contender for Presti’s first major misstep as Thunder GM.

But it always amazes how quickly the NBA balances itself.

Harden cooled off and his combination with Lin began to slow down. Unfortunately for Jeremy, the sanity in his game had returned and it was his opponents doing the certifying; he was finding it harder to make those Linsane moments stick.

Meanwhile back in Thunder land, Harden’s less hairy replacement Kevin Martin was quietly providing excellent scoring options off the bench for Oklahoma, all the while watching Durant, Westbrook and Ibaka continue to make a case for a talent cap in the NBA. The Thunder have been on a role ever since (17-4 at last check) and seem to have settled nicely into the post beard fearing era.

Yet while Houston has been on a slide of late (for which the effect of the tragic circumstances surrounding coach Kevin McHale’s absence can not be overstated) it seems as though Harden and the Rockets may still come up smelling roses.

Harden has himself an $80million contract as a starting scoring guard on the youngest team in the NBA, while the Rockets have a wonderfully dynamic team leader who can be built around for years to come.

So it seems I, like many others, may be wrong on all counts. The James Harden trade looks like it will go down as one of those rarest of NBA beasts. A trade where all parties come out the other end satisfied.

The recent smiles on the faces of Thunder fans and Houston novelty beard sellers will attest to that.