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Harden and Westbrook won’t win a title due to ‘ball dominance’ — Shannon Sharpe | NBA | UNDISPUTED

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Two MVPs, one basketball — Shannon Sharpe doesn’t like Houston’s math.

The Houston Rockets just remade their backcourt, and the debate over whether it actually works started before either player put on a Rockets jersey. Houston sent Chris Paul and draft picks to the Oklahoma City Thunder for 2017 NBA MVP Russell Westbrook, pairing him with reigning scoring champion and 2018 MVP James Harden. On FS1’s “Skip and Shannon: Undisputed,” Shannon Sharpe wasted no time explaining why he thinks the move doesn’t get Houston any closer to a title.

• The Rockets traded Chris Paul and draft picks to Oklahoma City to acquire Russell Westbrook, pairing him in the backcourt with James Harden.
• Sharpe argues both Harden and Westbrook rank among the NBA’s highest-usage players and have shown little ability or willingness to play effectively off the ball.
• Sharpe’s critique echoes Kobe Bryant’s earlier comments during the 2018-19 season that Harden’s isolation-heavy style wouldn’t win a championship in the postseason.

Sharpe’s Case Against the Pairing

Sharpe’s argument centers on usage rate — the metric that measures how much of a team’s offense runs through a single player while he’s on the floor. Harden and Westbrook have both lived at the top of that leaderboard for years, building their games around having the ball in their hands to attack off the dribble, draw fouls and create shots in isolation. Sharpe’s point is simple: you can’t hand the ball to two players who are wired the same way and expect either one to actually get better.

He didn’t see evidence that either guard has shown he can thrive as a spot-up shooter or a secondary decision-maker for stretches of a game. Westbrook built an MVP resume and a run of triple-doubles in Oklahoma City doing exactly what Harden does in Houston — dominating the ball, not standing in the corner waiting for a kick-out.

The Kobe Comparison

Sharpe’s take isn’t happening in a vacuum. During the 2018-19 season, Kobe Bryant publicly criticized Harden’s reliance on isolation basketball, suggesting that style of offense would eventually get exposed in the playoffs no matter how gaudy the regular-season numbers looked. Sharpe leaned on that same logic in making his case against Houston’s new pairing.

Both guys have to have the ball in their hands to be effective — and you can’t have two “have the ball in my hands” guys on the same team and win a championship.

That’s the crux of Sharpe’s argument: it’s not about talent, it’s about fit. Harden and Westbrook are both capable of takeover scoring nights, but a title team, in Sharpe’s view, needs players who can create shots without needing the ball on every possession.

The Standard Set by Recent Champions

Sharpe pointed to recent title teams as his blueprint for what actually wins in June. The Golden State Warriors’ dynastic run was built on ball movement and multiple shot-creators sharing possessions rather than one or two stars dominating touches. Sharpe’s broader point is that the league’s best rosters have trended toward flexibility — guys who can play with or without the ball — while Houston is doubling down on two players who have almost always needed it in their hands.

Whether Houston’s Mike D’Antoni-designed system can bend two ball-dominant MVPs into a functional two-man attack against the West’s other contenders is the exact question Sharpe raised on air, and it’s one the Rockets will have to answer once the games actually count.