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Who’s the Better Shooting Guard: Klay Thompson or James Harden?

By Tyler Blint- Welsh

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Every single sports fan in America has had the discussion at one point or another. Every single day, at bars across the nation, men (and women) sit at the counter and debate “Who’s the better player?”. Back in high school, I remember meeting with my friends and having roundtable, ESPN First Take- esque discussions in empty classrooms during lunch time. Freshman year it was “Kobe or Wade?” Sophomore year it was “Kobe or LeBron?”. Junior year we all agreed that LeBron was the best player on the planet. But by senior year, it was “LeBron or KD?” There never was a right answer for those types of questions, so those discussions got pretty heated, pretty fast.

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Now as a freshman in college, a lot of things are different. I’m in a new city, surrounded by new people and I’m exposing myself to a lot of brand new things. But as I experience changes in my own life, there are also major shifts happening in the landscape of the NBA. The superstars of my childhood aren’t the ones highlighting SportsCenter every evening anymore. Kobe, Wade and LeBron are slowly changing to Harden, Westbrook and Curry. Though he is still a great player, LeBron is beginning to show signs of his mortality, while Kobe is struggling in his battle against Father Time and Wade looks like an absolute shell of himself.

With Bryant and Wade fading away, James Harden has established himself as the best shooting guard in the league over the last two seasons. But, Klay Thompson has begun to stake a claim at his throne and the question of the moment is now becoming “Thompson or Harden?” At the moment, Harden is ahead of Thompson in all of the traditional statistics, averaging 27.6 points, 6.8 assists and 5.6 compared to Thompson’s 23.0 points, 3.0 assists and 3.0 rebounds.

But a deeper look at the numbers helps draw a more sophisticated comparison of the pair of newly minted All- Stars.

However, the differing styles of offense and roles that these two have must be noted. On the Houston Rockets, James Harden splits the ball handling duties with Patrick Beverley and is tasked with being the team’s primary playmaker. He has to make sure that he gets his share of shots, while also ensuring that his teammates get theirs as well.

James Harden has had to carry the Rockets offensively this season, in ways other than just scoring the basketball.

On the Warriors, Stephen Curry is the primary ball-handler which means that when Thompson does get the ball, he’s often already in scoring position because he is free to run through screens all over the floor to get himself open.

That being said, Klay Thompson is still by far the more efficient scorer, on all parts of the floor.

Because of his ability to draw fouls so consistently (Harden leads the league in free throw attempts this season), Harden has developed a reputation as being one of the best finishers at the rim in the league. But the statistics indicate that this season, Thompson is easily the better one at the rim. While he does have 145 less overall attempts, Klay Thompson is shooting 70.0% on layups or dunks this season compared to James Harden’s 61.4%. On two point jump shots, Thompson is shooting at a better percentage (39.4% to 34.2%) while having taken 41 more overall attempts. And if those numbers weren’t convincing enough, Thompson is far and away the better three point shooter as well. On 22 less attempts, Thompson has 14 more makes than Harden while shooting a ridiculous 45.6% (second among players with at least 150 attempts) to Harden’s 38.2%.

Overall, Klay Thompson has been the more frequent and more efficient jump shooter this season. (Chart courtesy of NBAsavant.com)

Again, these two play very different styles of basketball and it certainly is much easier to get open looks when defenses also have to worry about Stephen Curry doing damage but it seems that Thompson is overall much more efficient than Harden is.

But it’s also easy to understand why. In watching a few games, it’s obvious that Harden has to work much harder for his baskets than Thompson does, an observation that the statistics also support. On jump shots this season, Harden has only been assisted on 65 out of 199 (32.6%) makes while Thompson has been assisted on 176 out of 241 of his jump shots (73%). Without a playmaker to allow Harden to play off the ball, he’s forced to do a lot of scoring on his own and while he gets it done, he does it as a less efficient clip than Thompson.

What he lacks in efficiency however, Harden makes up for with sheer offensive talent. While Klay is still not entirely comfortable taking more than a couple dribbles and pulling up for the jump shot or getting to the rim, Harden is one of the best in the game on touches lasting more than three dribbles. Harden has over three times as many shot attempts that have come after three or more dribbles than Thompson, and has hit 45.6% of them compared to Klay’s 42.4%.

This season Harden has been one of the best players at creating his own shot, something Thompson hasn’t mastered yet.

It’s not uncommon for Harden to gather the rebound, bring the ball up court, cross his defender and then finish emphatically at the rim all by himself. He plays with the swagger of a superstar, something that Klay hasn’t fully developed yet but seems to be well on his way toward. Based on this, one would think that Harden has the leg up when it comes to finishing tough shots. But on heavily contested shots (defined as shots in which the defender is between 0-1 foot away), Thompson actually shoots 17% higher than Harden (52% to 35.4%).

Thompson’s superior shooting stroke seems to be the difference when it comes to scoring, no matter how you look at the stats. But theres more to offense than just making shots.

Part of a shooting guard’s duties involve handling the ball, and while Harden admittedly does much more of that than Thompson, he’s a very sloppy ball handler. With a 30.6 percent usage rate, Harden currently ranks 2nd overall in unforced turnovers with 142, compared to only 62 from Thompson despite his own fairly high Usage Rate of 25.5 and as a team’s primary option, Harden simply cannot have that many unforced errors. At times Harden tries to do too much by himself, and forces the offense instead of letting the scoring come to him like Thompson does. Because of his more passive style of play, Thompson is much more efficient than Harden, even though they’re both excellent offensive players.

But what about the defense?

With advanced defensive statistics still in their early phases, it’s hard to get a perfect look at the defensive impact of an individual player. But based on the numbers available, Thompson is easily easily the better defender. As Blue Man Hoop’s Greg Chin pointed out earlier this season, Thompson has forced opponents to shoot almost 10% worse versus him compared to the regular season averages and currently ranks second in Defensive Rating among all guards with 25 or more starts. Meanwhile, James Harden is still caught doing this:

Resolving the debate of “Who’s the better player” is never an easy task. But in this case, Thompson is the clear winner. He scores just as well, takes less shots to do it, is much more efficient and to top it off, doubles as one of the best perimeter defenders in the NBA.

Klay Thompson, your All- Star berth is well deserved.

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