No one thought James Harden would be this good. The Houston Rockets guard showed plenty of potential as a college player at Arizona State—enough to make him the third overall pick in the 2009 NBA draft—but no one saw him as a future MVP candidate. The scouts had already made their assessment: Harden wasn’t an elite athlete. He couldn’t shoot off the dribble. “Harden seems like he is going to be more of a system guy,” a Bleacher Report correspondent wrote in 2009.

Even after three full NBA seasons—even after winning the NBA’s Sixth Man of the Year Award in 2012—Harden still had plenty of doubters. He ended up with the Rockets only because the Warriors and Wizards passed on him. And some NBA insiders thought Rockets GM Daryl Morey was foolish for offering Harden an $80 million “max contract.” “Morey must've found the right set of numbers that told him Harden was a star," ESPN’s Israel Gutierrez wrote, “because using the eye test, it doesn't seem he's capable of handling that type of responsibility.” In fairness to Gutierrez, Harden himself wasn’t entirely sure if he was good enough to be a true superstar.

The question, then, is how did this happen? How did Harden go from being a very good to an astonishingly good basketball player? How did he go from scoring 9.9 points per game during his rookie season to 27.4 points per game this year—a number that placed him second in the league in scoring (less than a point behind Russell Westbrook and over two points ahead of LeBron James)? It wouldn’t be the first time a player has made an unexpected leap at the professional level—Steve Nash and Paul George come to mind—but Harden seems to have changed in ways he was least likely to change. Former NBA All-Star and coach Doug Collins once noted that Harden “had no motor in college. None.” And motor isn’t the kind of thing you can teach. You either have that extra something, that inner drive to win, or you don't. A lot of extraordinarily talented players never reach the upper echelons of the NBA because they lack a motor. Something changed inside of James Harden, something that can’t be explained only by more hours in the gym.

Or maybe something changed on the outside? After all, when Harden played for Arizona State, a motor wasn’t the only thing he was missing.

James Harden had facial hair at Arizona State, even a respectable enough beard by his second season. But—and this can’t be emphasized enough—it was simply a beard, not “the beard.” At Arizona State, Harden was an average-looking guy with sleepy eyes and a chin that, when he smiled, seemed a little too narrow for his otherwise broad features. It wasn't until Harden’s second season in the NBA that we began to see hints of the masterpiece that sits beneath his face today. And yet, like Harden’s game at the time, his beard remained a work in progress. It already had that mesmerizing deep-black glow, yes, but the kid from Arizona State was still detectable somewhere in there.