James Harden makes us question what beauty is

James Harden is incredible. The reason people don’t like him is the nature of beauty.

Is James Harden beautiful? This is not a question about the beard. (The answer to that one is maybe, with the beard; without the beard, not as much.) This is a question about whether or not Harden plays a beautiful brand of basketball.

Harden divides opinion like no other superstar. Despite everything he’s achieved, a debate rages about whether he’s actually entertaining to watch. Even at his best, Harden can’t seem to fully win over fans — ESPN even ran a segment on Harden’s popularity in the midst of his unprecedented streak of games scoring 30-plus points:

Harden’s game is supposedly too isolation-heavy. He slows the game down to a near standstill. There are instances in every game when he dribbles the shot clock down to single digits before making his move. Being on the Rockets, he’s encouraged to either shoot threes or go for layups or dunks. His available actions are limited relative to other superstars.

He also depends on foul calls for scoring more than anyone else in the league. And he often flops. He exaggerates contact, which can feel less like trying to beat his opponents, and more like hacking the game. He’s found loopholes to get the easiest points possible: free throws.

The defense of Harden’s style is that he’s crafty and effective. That his isolation game isn’t so much his fault as it is that of a Rockets system that demands it. It’s a way to nullify defenses that switch often, and since Harden is one of the best in the league at scoring in isolation, it’s also a reasonable tactic.

But even if Harden’s game can be argued for on utilitarian grounds, beauty is another standard altogether. Beauty and entertainment are naturally linked. Though it has a reputation for being reductive and elementary in our world, entertainment is a byproduct of the things that delight us. Beautiful things engage our imagination. Beauty is pleasurable to look at and think about. It entertains, first and foremost.

Harden does many entertaining and beautiful things within the Rockets’ system. His step-back three is an elegant blend of balance and timing. When he does take defenders on, he can beat them with power and body control, or with crossovers and finesse. He’s also a great passer. And there’s theoretical beauty in his ability to draw fouls and con referees. Players like Kobe Bryant and Dwyane Wade have been lauded for the same cunningness in the past, though few take it to Harden’s extreme.

But Harden’s balance of entertainment is off. As it is argued right now, the debate about Harden seems to be about aesthetics versus effectiveness. One side says that though what he does is effective, it can’t be beautiful because it isn’t entertaining to watch. Others counter that because Harden’s game is effective, it’s inherently entertaining and beautiful.

This isn’t the true argument, however. There’s no conflict between aesthetics and effectiveness. Many functional things are beautiful. That marriage is the basis of things like design and architecture, and there are many elite players whose styles are beautiful, yet functional: Stephen Curry, Kyrie Irving, Damian Lillard, Kevin Durant, Nikola Jokic, and Harden’s teammate Chris Paul.

The discussion about Harden is about what beauty in sports means in the first place, a more specific version of the never-ending argument of whether beauty is objective or subjective. The answer varies by person. I think beauty is inevitably a combination of the subjective and objective, of personal taste and the larger ideals of the society or community that we inhabit. The subjective is often influenced by the objective, even when we aren’t aware of it.

As basketball fans, we tend to view passing basketball that engages many players and relies on movement as the most beautiful version of the sport. The pre-Durant Warriors and Steve Nash Suns are two good examples of that dynamism. Recently, the Nuggets’ ball movement produced what is considered one of the most beautiful sequences of these playoffs:

We like players who can fit and thrive within the mold of passing and movement, but there’s also an allowance for those who don’t, as long as they are creative in their individual work. Irving often isolates, but he’s entertaining with his crossovers and finishes. The same can be said for Curry and Lillard. Durant isolates a lot as well, and while he is sometimes chided for disrupting a system that used to emphasize the beauty of ball movement, he is also often praised as breathtaking because of how impossible he is to stop.

Within that accepted standard in basketball, beauty also depends on what each individual or group of fans values.

If someone values technical excellence, then Klay Thompson’s shooting form is beautiful. If someone values power and domination, then poster dunks are beautiful. If it’s creativity with the ball, then crossovers, no-look passes, and switching hands while finishing at the rim are fun to watch.

And if one values pure effectiveness alone, then getting fouls by conning the referees and exaggerating contact, or making the three after dribbling down the clock might be considered beautiful. All of these standards are not exclusive, and often intermingle.

The problem for Harden is that while beauty is subjective, his game runs counter to the popular standard of beauty at the moment. If only a few people see his style as beautiful, then he is at best an exclusive art, or a cult entertainer.

His actions are so repulsive to some people that it colors everything else that he does, even the entertaining things. Harden’s reputation has gotten to the point that fellow players and coaches mock him:

Conversely we, as fans, tend to have no problem with a player if he gets to the free throw line by beating and forcing his defender to foul out of desperation. Joel Embiid and Giannis Antetokounmpo, for example, draw fouls out of domination. And Harden can win fouls by dominating his opponents, too. But he also tries to draw fouls as a primary way to score points, and that’s where the problem lies.

The reason Harden’s deception repulses so many people has to do with what we can think of as the Thor and Loki divide. Superstars are mostly Thors: Dominant, powerful, and simply better than their opponents. This can take many forms, from the physicality of Embiid, to the range of Curry. But great players can be Lokis, too. Because they’re not as talented or physically-gifted as the Thors, they rely on deception and underhanded tricks — sorcery — to find ways around their competition.

Lokis don’t necessarily have to be seen as repulsive. Manu Ginobili was beloved, and his game was predicated on deception. Jokic dominates through sorcery as well. The Lokis are accepted as long as they’re trying to outsmart their opponents directly. But once the lies go outside the realm of competition, and towards the officials who are trying to regulate it, people begin to see deception as cowardly, rather than cunning.

Harden is a superstar. He’s a Thor. He can dominate his opponents directly, but he also plays like a Loki. He abuses loopholes and appeals to the referees. One of the constant criticisms of Harden is that his flopping should be beneath him, that he doesn’t need to do it.

His flops are equivalent to Thor lying to Odin to get Odin to punish Loki, rather than just overpowering Loki on his own. That’s an effective tactic — and Thor would be right to use deception when his opponent is stronger — but it’s not what people would enjoy or associate with his powers.

Roland Barthes once said that, “Style makes a difficult action into a graceful gesture, introduces a rhythm into fatality. Style is to be courageous without disorder, to give necessity the appearance of freedom.” This is the central frustration with Harden. He doesn’t give necessity the appearance of freedom with his style. He plays as if winning those fouls are all he can do.

Sports are not just about effectiveness. They’re entertainment. They’re about beauty in action. Most of us don’t watch a game just because we want to see players put a ball in a hoop, but because we want to be delighted in how they manage to do it. Harden willingly sacrifices the beauty of his game, turning himself into the rare superstar who can’t entertain.