Kent Bazemore Took To Twitter To Explain James Harden Sending Him To The Moon

If we’re being honest, I can’t remember if we’ve ever seen this before. Has a player ever gotten destroyed on the court, saw how the internet reacted and then opened up his Notes to give an explanation? If it has I can’t remember so you have to give credit for owning up to that Shaqtin’ moment. Here’s the thing though, there’s no shame in being destroyed by James Harden. I dare you to find an NBA player who hasn’t been. Also, there have been much worse basketball murders via Harden anyways so Bazemore shouldn’t sweat it too much.

But let’s focus on his actual explanation, because unfortunately I’m not sure it helps. Like I didn’t read that and say “Oh ok, that makes sense, no big deal”. In my opinion there’s no winning by doing something like this, in fact I would have respected him if he just completely ignored it moving forward like it never happened. At the same time we don’t often get defensive breakdown like this from the guy who got killed, so I found it pretty interesting. My first problem is his decision to use this sort of spin move as a way for better recovery. I feel like that’s an issue right off the bat, even if he was trying to defend the stepback. By doing that he loses vision of Harden and had no idea that he was in fact not even going for the step back. That misstep as soon as he turned around was all the time Harden needed to leave him in his rear view mirror. This just gives you an idea of how impossible it is to guard this man. You basically have to guess and Harden knows it, which is why he basically toys with every defender who lines up across from him. He lulls you to sleep until you think you see a tell, only he’s showing you that on purpose because he’s already 3 moves ahead. You hear all of the great iso scorers talk about their approach, and every one will tell you it’s not about the initial move or initial defender, it’s knowing what he’s going to do before he does it so you can react a completely different way and score with ease. I’m sure there’s film of Harden getting into his step back once the ball is in his left hand in this exact scenario, so Bazemore isn’t wrong for assuming that route, it just wasn’t even close.

It’s great that Bazemore can have fun with it and it’s good to hear that he is in fact live well, but to be honest his #PadLockBaze nickname took a little bit of a hit and his place in the “I got destroyed by James Harden” support group led by Wesley Johnson is forever secure and space is running out