Cavs fans, let’s address the $97 million elephant in the room. 

James Harden was having a terrific season last year when the Cavaliers acquired him. However, shortly after his arrival in Cleveland, he began to struggle. 

Let’s take a quick look at why this might be, from a basketball perspective.

The death of the classical point guard position

Traditionally, the point guard is primarily tasked with running the offense and distributing the basketball. Oftentimes, your point guard is NOT your best scorer, or even your second option. It’s common for your point guard to be one of the best defenders on the floor.

A little over a decade ago, with the rise in popularity of Stephen Curry, the position became more “score first,” and point guards were encouraged to emulate Curry rather than more modern traditional point guards like Chris Paul or Jrue Holiday.

This led to a boom of elite-level shooting guards transitioning to the point guard position. James Harden was one of the first beneficiaries of this shift.

Houston gave Harden the point guard duties, and in the context of Mike D’Antoni’s iconic seven-second offense, it worked very well.

Why this is not sustainable

For most average NBA shooting guards, this transition wasn’t possible as it takes a James Harden/Steph Curry caliber offensive player to fill that role, as well as an offensive scheme catered to such a player. 

Because of this, we saw teams with elite young scoring guards(like the Jazz with Donovan Mitchell) acquire traditional point guards rather than force a textbook “score first” shooting guard to play the role of lead distributor as well.

The Jazz acquired Mike Conley Jr. to help develop their young guard in Mitchell and subsequently shipped Conley to Minnesota to help develop Anthony Edwards. Neither Mitchell nor Edwards developed into point guards, while both players remain All-NBA caliber.

While the failure to acquire a classical playmaker led to teams like our Cavaliers playing high lottery picks like Collin Sexton out of position for years, stunting their development.

Why is Harden struggling now?

Given Harden already transitioned to a “Curry-style” point guard years ago, why is he struggling to perform well now?

That question is easily answered by the only undefeated player in the history of sports. Father Time.

Of course, there was a point in time in the not-so-distant past when Harden played this pseudo point guard role at an elite level, but that time has passed us.

Harden is showing all of the signs that have led to teams forcing their “Curry-style” point guards back into their shooting guard roles. 

With his turnover issues, accompanied by lower scoring and assist numbers, it could absolutely be time to relegate Harden back to an off-the-ball “score-first” shooting guard role.