For the second time in four days, LeBron James went head-to-head with a fellow MVP candidate leading a Western Conference contender. But while he dominated Thursday's matchup with Stephen Curry and the Golden State Warriors, on Sunday, Houston Rockets star James Harden matched him step-for-step in a rough-and-tumble contest that featured 13 ties and 11 lead changes, and came down to the final seconds of overtime.
And on this particular occasion, the most gifted player in the game found himself bedeviled at the worst time by an uncontested 15-footer.
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With the Rockets leading his Cleveland Cavaliers 104-103 late in the overtime session of a nationally televised Sunday showcase contest, James beat excellent Rockets defender Trevor Ariza off the dribble to gain the lane, where he was fouled while attempting a layup by Houston forward Josh Smith. The whistle sent James to the foul line for a pair of free throws that could have tied the game and given the Cavs a one-point advantage with just 4.2 seconds left.
But James, who had struggled from the line all day, found no charity at the stripe, missing them both — making him just 3-for-11 from the foul line on the day — and prompting ABC play-by-play man Mike Tirico to exclaim, "Are you kidding me?" as Harden corralled the miss.
After a pair of Cleveland fouls to extend the game, Harden stepped to the line on the other end with 0.6 seconds remaining and a chance to seal the victory. As the Toyota Center crowd serenaded him with "M-V-P!" chants, Harden made his first free throw before missing his second — intentionally, he said after the game, at the behest of head coach Kevin McHale. The plan to bleed out the final six-tenths backfired, though, as Cavaliers guard J.R. Smith snagged the rebound and called timeout, giving them one last look at a potential equalizer.
The Rockets snuffed out the Cavs' attempt, though — Josh Smith covered up a potential lob to the rim, and James' inbounds pass to little-used 3-point shooter James Jones resulted in a catch-and-after-the-buzzer shot that was blocked anyway, putting the finishing touches on an impressive 105-103 overtime victory.
In his return to the lineup after missing Friday's loss to the Indiana Pacers with a sore back, James led all scorers with 37 points on uncharacteristic 15-for-35 shooting — his highest single-game shot total in more than nine years, two more than he needed to score a career-high 61 — to go with eight rebounds, four assists, three steals and three blocks in 42 minutes for the Cavaliers, who were once again without All-Star point guard Kyrie Irving as he works his way back from a left shoulder strain. (Cleveland head coach David Blatt said Irving's expected to be back for Tuesday's meeting with the Boston Celtics.)
But after missing eight freebies in a two-point loss — those final two in OT, obviously, looming largest — James didn't seem particularly excited about the rest of his stat line.
The missed free throws wrote a frustrating end to a physical matchup that featured thrilling, high-level play in the early going, but at times seemed to be barely officiated later in the proceedings. (It might be a good thing for referees Danny Crawford, Michael Smith and Tony Brown that the NBA's "last two minutes" reports, which will evaluate calls made and not made during the final two minutes of the fourth quarter and throughout OT periods in close games, won't start getting made public until tomorrow.)
Things began getting especially dicey after halftime, when hard-nosed Rockets point guard Patrick Beverley's attempt to draw an offensive foul on a driving James about 2 1/2 minutes into the third quarter turned into something a bit spicier than a mere question of "block or charge?"
Both James and Beverley were assessed technical fouls for their role in the skirmish, while Beverley also received a personal foul for sliding into LeBron's path too late on the bang-bang play.
About seven minutes later, James would again find himself in the midst of a scrape, this time with Harden, who took a somewhat Rodmanian approach to letting LeBron know he didn't appreciate his tight defense:
James and his teammates, as you might expect, didn't particularly appreciate Harden's decision to go south of the equator, which earned Houston's hirsute All-Star a flagrant foul-1 — but not a flagrant-2, which would have carried with it an automatic ejection:
It remains to be seen whether Harden will face additional discipline from the league office for his foray into crotch karate. There's precedent for it, though — Miami Heat star Dwyane Wade received a one-game suspension for a low blow on Ramon Sessions, then of the Charlotte Bobcats, that didn't even earn Wade a personal foul at the time. (In fact, remarkably enough, Sessions was the one who got called for the reach-in.)
Perhaps the most baffling confluence of physical play and absent discipline, though, came at the one-minute mark of OT, as Harden drove on James and ... well, just take a look:
"That's got to be something!" exclaimed Tirico after watching James reach in on Harden, Harden hook James' arm, Harden move his feet a few times without taking any dribbles, James recover and straddle Harden's left leg, all as three officials just ... sort of ... chilled? The result of the play: a shot-clock violation. Duh.
Amid all the silliness and strong-arming, though, there was quite a bit of wonderful basketball, and some brilliant late-game dueling between Harden and James, two of the league's top three scorers and two members of the lead pack in the race for this season's Podoloff.
Harden scored 18 of his team-high 33 points after halftime, showcasing his penchant for creating contact and getting to the line (9-for-12 at the stripe post-intermission, 15-for-18 in the game) while also displaying his talents for creating space and bombing away from long-distance:
... and his water-through-pavement capacity to find every open crease in the lane on his way to the basket before finishing through contact:
James answered the bell, doing his level best to stifle Harden when defending him one-on-one:
... while also making some absurd shots of his own late in the game, as he carried a Cleveland offense that was once again without Irving and, for all intents and purposes, might as well have been without Kevin Love (a relatively quiet 21 points, all of which came in the first three quarters):
In the end, though, it was the Rockets' ability to cash in on their freebies (26-for-33 at the line) and the Cavs' inability to do the same (11-for-21, topped by LeBron's dismal outing) that wound up providing more than enough of a margin to give Houston its fifth straight win and burnish an impressive late-and-close résumé:
The Rockets now sit at 41-18, just 1 1/2 games back of the Memphis Grizzlies for the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, and improved to 19-8 without injured center Dwight Howard. There are plenty of reasons for that — improved play in the middle from Donatas Motiejunas, midseason acquisition Smith finding his form, stout team defense helping keep Houston near the top of the league in points allowed per possession — but the biggest remains Harden, the serpentine lefty who described the tenor of Sunday's contest to ABC's Lisa Salters as "playoff basketball."
"Whatever it takes to win," he said. "Both teams competed hard. I'm happy we came out with the victory."
Harden began his postgame interview by rubbing his left shoulder, prompting Salters to ask him multiple times whether he was feeling all right. Harden said he was.
"I'm a warrior," he said, smiling.
And on Sunday, he was a victorious one.
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Dan Devine is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at devine@yahoo-inc.com or follow him on Twitter!
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