It has been a rough go for 2018 NBA MVP James Harden so far in the 2021-22 season. While the biggest story in Nets Land this year has been the absence of Kyrie Irving, things have not gone especially well for Harden. Some people are even beginning to wonder about a few nightmare scenarios, a harrowing thought for general manager Sean Marks and company.

Harden is putting up just 18.3 points per game (his lowest in 10 years) and 4.6 free-throw attempts per contest (his lowest in 11 years), and opponents haven't had to “Fear the Beard” as they did in seasons past.

There are two main issues here and they have had a compounding effect on each other. One, he doesn't have the same burst as we've grown accustomed to, and two, the new rule changes have really limited his ability to get to the foul line. He's not getting to the rim at will lately.

“I don’t really like, think about [the officiating],” explained Harden following a win over the Atlanta Hawks on Nov. . “I just try to play basketball. That’s everybody else who makes big deals out of it and talks about it. … I don’t really focus on, you know, how the game is officiated. Each game is different.”

But he was peppered with questions about the subject again following the latest loss in Chicago. In that one, he dropped 14 points to go with eight boards and five assists. But he was just 4-of-11 from the field and again had difficulty getting to the rim.

So, did the officiating take him out of his bag?

“Nah, I don’t wanna talk about it,” said a frustrated James Harden after the game. “[The calls] didn’t take me out of my game. Felt like I played well ’til the fourth quarter. Fourth quarter, none of us played well. It definitely didn’t take me out of my game.”

Harden was much more willing to talk about all of the other subjects. Things more in the team's control, as he'd say. He prefers to talk about the in-game X's and O's.

“We weren't getting quality shots, man, we wasn’t getting shots that we were getting in that first half,” he said.

Was that something the Bulls did specifically? Harden shook his head and said simply “us.”

Reporters pressed the issue. Did Billy Donovan's defense play a role in holding the team to just 17 fourth-quarter points?

“A little bit maybe,” Harden admitted, “but we still can be in the right positions to be successful, feel like we wasn’t at all, everything was just scrambles, spacing execution wasn’t great.”

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Nets head coach Steve Nash has reminded reporters all season long that Harden was away from basketball for a long period this offseason as he rehabbed a Grade 2 hamstring injury. Nash has even talked about how some people think a player may need as many months back playing the game as he or she missed while hurt. If that mark holds true, perhaps we shouldn't expect so much from the perennial MVP candidate for another few months.

Harden first sustained the hamstring issue last March. He aggravated it during the opening moments of Game 1 against Milwaukee during the 2021 Eastern Conference Semis. He pushed through, but was clearly hobbled.

What if a combination of new rule changes and a lack of speed limits him … for good? Could this be a new normal?

Here's the latest on some nightmare scenarios for the Nets from Marc Stein, via Substack:

“The larger problem they have right now is that they don't have the real Harden, either, unless — and this is the truly scary scenario for them — what we've been seeing lately is the new Harden.

Judgments made on any one-night basis in the NBA are generally dumb, but it was difficult not to be alarmed by Harden's performance against the Pistons. He displayed no lift, no explosion and none of the guile around the rim or the touch on lobs he is known for. He committed nine turnovers. The whispers that used to circulate in his Rockets days, raising concerns about how Harden's game would age given his apparent disinterest in taking better care of himself off the floor, certainly came to mind.”

Jake Fischer of Bleacher Report also recently wrote about some league insiders who are skeptical Harden will regain top-tier form.

Per Fischer:

“But Harden's slow start has drawn the attention of skeptical league personnel who wonder whether this is the beginning of the perennial MVP candidate's decline into more of a secondary All-Star.

Other observers believe Harden's conditioning is the main factor in his depressed stats.”

For now, the Nets will continue to insist they're not worried. But might they already be? How much?

James Harden turned down a max extension from the Nets this offseason. He reassured everyone publicly that he wants to be a Net for life. It's safe to assume then he declined the offer in hopes of signing a much bigger one next summer; only Brooklyn can offer him a fifth year. But there may now exist at least a few nightmare scenarios where he wouldn't qualify as the type of max-level player we all expected by next summer.