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Playoff Harden Shows Up When Cleveland Needs Him Most

By JR·1 min read
Playoff Harden Shows Up When Cleveland Needs Him Most

TLDR: The James Harden playoff narrative got flipped on its head in the span of about 48 hours, and the Cavs are the ones cashing in. After a rough Game 2 and a podcast-circuit pile-on, Harden answered with the kind of closing performance that shuts everybody up.

  1. The best part came after the buzzer. Asked about the chatter around his playoff resume — the same chatter that's been a permanent fixture of his career — Harden gave the perfect non-answer: "What chatter?" That is exactly the energy you want from the guy who just bailed out your team. If you spend a decade getting roasted every spring, you earn the right to play dumb when the shots actually fall.

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    “What chatter?” James Harden hasn’t heard any of the narratives around his playoff performances

    It's one game. The discourse will be right back on him the second he goes 4-for-15 in a Game 4. But for one night in Cleveland, Harden flipped the whole conversation by doing the thing nobody on the podcast circuit thought he still had in him — closing. And honestly, the smug "What chatter?" might be the most fun he's looked in May in years.

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