If the real James Harden just stood up, the Sixers are suddenly a championship-caliber team

The uniform looked the same. The beard looked the same. The number, the name, the shoes — all of it suggested that the man with the ball in his hands was the same James Harden we saw here last season. But this was some different dude. And if he sticks around, the Sixers are a radically different team.

That’s what you saw on Saturday afternoon. The strength in the legs. The stability in the core. The hesitation. The elevation. This wasn’t the guy the Sixers acquired last season. This was the guy they thought they were acquiring. It took a bit longer than expected, but the Sixers’ 121-101 win over the Nets in their playoff opener sure felt like it was the start of a materialization of a plan.

That’s how good Harden looked. He has talked all season about how much better his body feels compared to a frustrating and borderline lost 2021-22 season in which poor conditioning and a lingering hamstring injury left him a stumbling, fumbling, flat-footed shell of himself. On Saturday, those words were unnecessary. You could see it.

Forget about the numbers. They were great, no doubt: 23 points, 13 assists, 7-of-13 from three-point range. But the real testament was the individual plays. Start with that devastating second-quarter step-back move that he unleashed on poor Spencer Dinwiddie. One moment, Harden was dribbling to his right with his eyes on the baseline, a quick first step planting inside of the arc as if he was going to make his move toward the rim. The next moment, his entire body was behind that arc, the change of direction so strong and instantaneous that it sent Dinwiddie stumbling backward a full four feet. By the time the defender recovered his balance, Harden was elevating above the court and releasing a smooth 26-foot jumper that caught nothing but net and gave the Sixers a seven-point lead.

“My legs and my body just feel powerful,” Harden said postgame. “There was a stint where I think I played 13 minutes straight from the end of the first quarter and then the whole second quarter. And I feel really good. The work that I put in, this is the reason for it.”

Harden has more than earned the right to take that credit. After last season’s second-round playoff exit against the Heat, there were plenty of skeptics who doubted whether he had the willpower to complete the necessary transformation. He looked old. He looked slow. He routinely looked like a player whose body could no longer execute the moves he was asking it to do. Age catches up quick. And it sure looked like it got him.

“Not being in great shape in the playoffs is not a great place to be,” Sixers head coach Doc Rivers said earlier last week, “because everybody’s running it at their maximum level of physicality, and, mentally, and if you’re not, it’s not gonna go well for you. And James found that out last year.”

» READ MORE: What’s next on Joel Embiid’s to-do list? A title. ‘That’s the ultimate goal’

Most conspicuous was the absence of that stepback move that for years made Harden a perennial MVP contender. Four years ago, Harden had a stretch where he averaged 12.8 three-point attempts per game in 146 regular-season contests and 11.0 per game in the postseason. In last year’s playoff series against the Raptors and Heat, he averaged close to half as many: a mere 6.3 per game.

Not only that, but the shots that he did take were not the same shots he was taking when he was at his peak. During that 2018-20 stretch, a whopping 83% of his three-point makes were unassisted. Last year, that dropped to closer to 70%. And that obviously does not include all the shots he did not even take.

Now, go back to Saturday. That second-quarter stepback against Dinwiddie was one of three he drained. Three of his seven makes came without an assist.

“We need him aggressive, and he was today,” said Joel Embiid, who attempted six fewer shots than Harden in the win over the Nets, finishing with a (relatively) modest 26 points. “By him attacking, it collapses the defense and creates open shots for everybody else. He’s not just being a playmaker. He’s being aggressive, going downhill, and creating for himself.”

That’s the sort of player Embiid has long known he needs playing along side of him. The proof was there throughout Saturday’s victory. This was a runaway train of a game. The Nets would have needed six or seven players on the court to take an appropriate accounting of Harden and Embiid. Understandably, they picked Harden as their poison. Unlike last year, it was never going to work.

“Man, he looked great,” Embiid said. “Dribble penetration, setting up guys, his shot looked great from three. He got his shot blocked a few times at the rim but that’s going to happen and I’m sure that next time he’s gonna finish it. But he looks amazing, and that’s great to see.”

» READ MORE: What makes Sixers forward P.J. Tucker so special? Let his former teammates and coaches tell you.

Is Harden the same player he was when he was at his physical peak? Obviously not. But he’s immeasurably closer to being that player than he was during last year’s playoff run. The 21 shots that he attempted against the Nets in Game 1 were three more than he attempted in any playoff game last year. Only once did he attempted more than seven shots from three-point range.

“He’s in shape, he’s healthy, he’s confident in how we play,” Rivers said. “There was a lot of good there.”

It’s early, and the postseason is long, so we should be careful about how much we read into one single game. But if this is the version of Harden that the Sixers will be getting all playoffs, it should rewrite the script of expectations for this team.