Houston Rockets’ James Harden is still thinking about the NBA MVP award that slipped through his fingers last season. During an interview with 97.9 The Box, Harden opened up about his second-place finish in MVP voting behind Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo and revealed the reasons for why he didn’t win the honors.
According to Harden, media “narrative” largely affected his chances and eventually contributed to his loss.
“Once the media, they create a narrative about somebody from the beginning of the year, I think they just take that narrative and just run with it the entire year,” – said Harden. “I don’t want to get into details. All I can do is control what I can do, and I went out there and did what I was supposed to do at a high level. There’s only a few other seasons that anybody has ever done that before.”
You can check out the entire interview below.
James Harden had a historic season in 2018/19 from an offensive standpoint as he led the league in scoring with 36.1 points per game and had a 32-games streak in which he scored at least 30 points. Still, this wasn’t enough for him to claim the MVP honors, as voters leaned towards Antetokounmpo due to the fact that he led the Bucks to the best record in the league.
This wasn’t the first time for Harden to narrowly miss on MVP Award. In 2014/15 NBA season, he finished second to Stephen Curry, while 2016/17 saw him lose to Russell Westbrook. He finally won the award in 2017-18 when he led the Rockets to the first seed in the Western Conference.
