at. But at the end of the day, they are who they are—and
that’s pretty good. You’ve got two MVPs. Now my job is
to make sure they’re confident, they feel good together,
they’re rested, they’re focused. If they’re that, we’re gonna
be really good.”
In some ways, it really is that simple. Sharing the ball isn’t
exactly splitting the atom. The most pertinent question when
stars converge is whether they wanted to in the first place.
Considering that Harden lobbied Westbrook, his friend of
20 years, and that Westbrook chose Houston in large part to
play with Harden, the verdict on that point seems quite clear.
The next issue is how they’ll manage it on an operational
level. To take the ball out of Westbrook’s hands is to take the
keys out of the ignition. Houston doesn’t mind. D’Antoni and
his staff actually take a certain pride in how little their team
moves—and, in particular, the idea that while covering the
least ground of any NBA team, the Rockets were still able to
produce the most open threes. All it took was one unstoppable
force and four relatively immovable objects.
The electricity of a player like Westbrook changes the
formula slightly, but not as much as you might think. “He’ll
be standing a lot,” D’Antoni says of Westbrook’s time without
the ball. Houston needs him to help space
the floor, which is to say it needs him to
shoot—even after making just 29.0% of
his threes last season, the worst of any
player with his volume. “If you take the
right shot,” D’Antoni says, “we do not care
if you miss shots.”
For all the reasonable concern over bal-
ancing possession between two high-vol-
ume creators—the “if and when and how,”
as Westbrook put it—these are two of the
best basketball players alive, aligned at
the perfect time in their careers. Time has
shown Harden and Westbrook how hard
it is to win, and just how many ways there
are to lose. Harden has one of the more
complicated playoff histories of any active
superstar. Westbrook hasn’t won a playoff
series since Durant left Oklahoma City
in 2016. “Thunder U” is over. Both are
now in their 30s. This is the real world,
where the weight of everyday life requires
coming to terms with a certain amount
of daily concession. Isn’t it only natural
that, now having really lived in the league,
these two stars would reach for the trust
they have in each other?
“I thought it was the best decision for me
and my career right now, and to be able to
reunite with a brother, a friend,” Westbrook
says. “To be able to do that is something
that you dream about and live for.”
The balance between superstars, at
the end of the day, is a matter of shared
experience. We can calculate how many
possessions a player consumes and how
many seconds they have the ball in their
hands. What matters more, fundamentally,
is the way it feels. And because basketball
operates in that space, it becomes subject
to the reality that Harden and Westbrook
want to see, and their desire to make this
work. “If and when I’m upset, he’s able to49SPORT S ILLUS TR ATED- OC T OBER 21–28, 2019
HOUSTON ROCKETS