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I wrote a piece yesterday on how this NBA season has moved so fast, it’s almost standing still. Or, to throw it at you another way, so much has happened, it feels like nothing has. Jeremy Lin is the sole exception, and the big winner, in this year of cognitive overload. But I had a nagging sense that someone else has, if not quite achieved a Linsanity-like hold on all audiences, at least made a sizable impact on his team and done much to change the way we judge said team’s destiny. It’s James Harden, a.k.a. the Black Ginobili, a.k.a. still everyone’s pick for Most Improved Player, even after Jeremy Lin’s arrival on the scene.

Harden, drafted third overall in 2009 by the Thunder, was once favorably and unfavorably compared to pre-injury Brandon Roy. He wasn’t known as the most physically gifted athlete (though the combine said otherwise); he was a big backcourt scorer who liked to take on the lead guard’s role when it came his way.

At the time, the pick was controversial; that was the Ricky Rubio draft and the despite the Thunder’s positionally inventive rotation, there just didn’t seem to be minutes for Harden. But the team was committed to Russell Westbrook, Sam Presti saw something in Harden, and well, Presti is always right. When Jeff Green was moved last year, Harden’s numbers went up, but not his minutes; he started to look like an overly legit sixth man. He also garnered tons of media attention during the playoffs as a purveyor of fine blipster memes and the owner of one of the NBA’s best post-Freeway beards. This year, he has joined with Durant and Westbrook to form the league’s highest-scoring trio. It’s a wonder no one has called them The Big Three yet.

I know I heard the Manu Ginobili comparison before this breakout year from someone way smarter than me, and probably laughed it off because Ginobili is such an idiosyncratic beast. As it turns out, Harden has that rare ability to let the ball flow through him while always staying ready to go on the attack, perhaps the defining feature of Ginobili’s game. It’s not the same as a point guard, who sets up the floor with scoring as one possible outcome. With Ginobili and Harden, it’s more like one of those fuzzy logic particles that is somehow "yes" and "no" at the same time.