Chatting casually while seated courtside, McHale was quick to credit the presence of Trevor Ariza and Jason Terry on this year’s team. He noted that while the Rockets have 10 players on their roster with two or fewer years of NBA experience, this is a more mature group than last season thanks to the presence those two and guard Patrick Beverley provide.

Combine that with Harden’s incredible variety on offense, and a Rockets team that was marked down by many after losing Chandler Parsons and Jeremy Lin as part of a gambit to lure Chris Bosh from Miami as a free agent is sitting at 19–5 after a home-and-home sweep of the Nuggets. In Wednesday’s 115–111 overtime win, Harden poured in 41 points (including 18-of-21 from the line) to go with 10 assists.

In the brutal Western Conference, that strong start carries no guarantees, but considering it has come without defensive anchor Dwight Howard for 11 games, it’s awfully impressive. Having a guard with Harden’s vast offensive repertoire also has enabled McHale to get a bit more creative.

“I think his post game is an area he can really grow, and he definitely can,” McHale said of his star guard. “[But] he can shoot the 3, he can drive — he can drive to pass, he can drive to finish, he drives and gets fouled. So you can put him in a multitude of positions, which gives you some flexibility. We don’t have the record we have right now if James is not playing at his level.”

Like any superstar, Harden bristles slightly when you talk about a part of his game that’s less than world-class, but in the end, he’s pretty honest about his defensive reputation and what he’s doing to improve it.

“On the ball, I was pretty good. It was just help-side defense, ball-watching, letting my man cut backdoor,” Harden suggested about his struggles in past seasons. “Small things like that that are very noticeable, so this year I’ve eliminated most of those things, and [I’m] top five in steals right now.”

It’s easy to take isolated clips of anyone and make them look worse than they are, and while Harden’s bad defensive moments were really bad (see his calamitous effort on a possession against Turkey in the World Cup for a particularly awful example), there was always the physical foundation to at least be competent on that side of the ball. He’s doing that now, and as such, it’s hard to find a player who’s had a bigger impact on his team’s success so far this season than Harden, who’s adjusting well in his new home at basketball’s apex.

“It just was a transition to me becoming, like you said, a superstar,” Harden said about his personal rise to what McHale referred to as ‘super-first-team All-NBA.’ “Obviously, learning how to score was one of the major keys, [but] being great on both ends of the floor is very important.”